Quotes of the Day:

"If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster." 

– Isaac Asimov

"Fear paralyzes; curiosity empowers. Be more interested than afraid." 

– Patricia Alexander

"Let no man pull you low enough to hate him." 

– Martin Luther King Jr.

1. In Memoriam Major General Robert H. Scales, Jr.

2. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 18, 2024

3. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, January 18, 2024

4. Israel Intensifies Raids Against Palestinians in West Bank

5. Israel-Gaza war live updates: Houthis target tanker in third attack on commercial shipping in three days

6. China’s Economy Is in Serious Trouble by Paul Krugman

7. Defense chief Austin asked to testify before Congress on hospital secrecy

8. Japan will attempt to land a spacecraft on the moon precisely

9. Ukraine is piling pressure on China to help it end the war. But Beijing’s plans for peace are focused on Gaza

10. The Principle of Proportionality in the DoD Law of War Manual

11. Military-technological cooperation across the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific

12. After Taiwan's election, its new envoy to the US offers assurances to Washington and Beijing

13. Where might the US station its B-21 bombers to deter China?

14. Taiwan’s Democracy Draws Envy and Tears for Visiting Chinese

15. Challenges And Prospects For Peace In Southeast And East Asia Is Acknowledged As ‘Navigating Complexities’

16. How cyberscams are drawing China into Myanmar’s civil war

17. West Must Be Prepared For War With Russia, NATO Official Warns Ahead Of Major Military Drills

18. Recent GPS Failures in Poland and Baltic States Blamed on Russian Electronic Warfare Trials

19. Gaza’s Underground: Hamas’s Entire Politico-Military Strategy Rests on Its Tunnels

20. Peace Between Israelis and Palestinians Remains Possible

21. Triple threat: N Korea, Iran flaunt new missile tech to Russia

22. The War in Ukraine Now Has Its First Draft – The One Element Keeping Ukraine From Total Defeat

23. ‘Wake up!’ European lawmakers warn Washington over Ukraine aid delays

24. US battle with Houthi rebels shows no signs of stopping

25. US Military Can’t Sustain Arctic Operations, ‘Let Alone Dominate,’ Experts Say

26. Why an Army Special Forces vet remains in custody on Jan. 6 charges

1. In Memoriam Major General Robert H. Scales, Jr.

In Memoriam Major General Robert H. Scales, Jr.

https://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/memoriam-major-general-robert-h-scales-jr

Small Wars Journal is saddened to acknowledge the death of Major General Robert Hinds Scales, Jr. (5 August 1944 – 12 January 2024). General Scales was a founding Small Wars Journal–El Centro Fellow. General Scales was a 1966 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Robert H. Scales was involved as a founding SWJ–El Centro Fellow until his death in January 2024.He was one of America’s best known and most respected authorities on land warfare. He was President of Colgen, Inc, a consulting firm specializing in issues relating to landpower, wargaming and strategic leadership. Prior to joining the private sector Dr. Scales served over thirty years in the Army, retiring as a Major General. He commanded two units in Vietnam, winning the Silver Star for action during the battles around Dong Ap Bia (Hamburger Hill) during the summer of 1969. Subsequently, he served in command and staff positions in the United States, Germany, and Korea and ended his military career as Commandant of the United States Army War College. He is the author of Certain Victory, Firepower in Limited War, Future Warfare, Yellow Smoke: the Future of Land Warfare for America’s Military, The Iraq War: a Military History (with Williamson Murray), and Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment (with Barry McCaffrey). He was a graduate of West Point and earned his PhD in history from Duke University.

Categories: El Centro

2.Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 18, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-january-18-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated that Russia’s maximalist objectives in Ukraine remain unchanged and that Russia is not interested in negotiations with Ukraine or the West.
• The battlespace in Ukraine continues to be the center of the technological offense-defense race between Russian and Ukrainian forces.
• Recent widespread GPS disruptions across Poland and the Baltic region are prompting speculation about the potential operation of Russian electronic warfare (EW) systems in the region.
• The French Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced on January 18 that it launched an “artillery coalition” to strengthen support for Ukraine amid continued Ukrainian statements that Russian forces in Ukraine have superior artillery capabilities.
• Ukrainian partisans and satellite imagery confirmed that Ukrainian strikes against occupied Crimea in late December 2023 sank a Russian Tarantul-class corvette near Sevastopol.
• The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reportedly conducted a successful drone strike on Russian military facilities in Leningrad Oblast on January 18.
• The European Union (EU) Parliament voted to endorse another step in a rule of law procedure that could eventually suspend Hungary’s voting rights after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban vetoed an EU vote for further military assistance to Ukraine.
• Russia and the Central African Republic (CAR) are in negotiations regarding Russian military basing in CAR.
• Russian forces made confirmed advances near Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area amid continued positional engagements along the front.
• Russian officials continue to target naturalized migrants as part of ongoing crypto-mobilization efforts.
• Russian occupation authorities continue efforts to restore logistics infrastructure in occupied Ukraine.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JANUARY 18, 2024

Jan 18, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 18, 2024

Christina Harward, Karolina Hird, Riley Bailey, Grace Mappes, Angelica Evans, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan

January 18, 2024, 7:30pm ET

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Click here to see ISW’s 3D control of terrain topographic map of Ukraine. Use of a computer (not a mobile device) is strongly recommended for using this data-heavy tool.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 1:00pm ET on January 18. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the January 19 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Note: ISW has added a new section on Ukrainian defense industrial base (DIB) efforts to the daily Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment to track the development of Ukraine’s DIB and the international support for Ukraine’s DIB efforts. ISW will be publishing its assessments in this section based on public announcements, media reporting, and official statements.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated that Russia’s maximalist objectives in Ukraine remain unchanged and that Russia is not interested in negotiations with Ukraine or the West. Lavrov stated at a press conference on January 18 that Russia “will achieve the goals of its ‘special military operation’ consistently and persistently.”[1] The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ (MFA) readout of this speech included a link to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 24, 2022 speech in which Putin outlined Russia’s goals of “demilitarizing” and “denazifying” Ukraine and his demand that NATO commit not to admit new members – goals which are tantamount to full Ukrainian and Western surrender.[2] Lavrov reiterated that these goals are unchanged, claiming that “serious” talks about the “realistic” conditions for ending the war “presuppose [Ukraine’s] renunciation of Nazi ideology, Nazi rhetoric, racism towards everything Russian, and entry into NATO.”[3] Lavrov attempted to justify these conditions as necessary for preserving the Ukrainian people’s independence and identity, despite the fact that ISW has routinely documented how Russian forces and occupation officials have been engaging in large-scale and deliberate ethnic cleansing campaigns and efforts to eliminate the Ukrainian language, culture, history, and ethnicity in areas that Russian forces occupy.[4] Lavrov also denied Ukraine’s agency as a sovereign state, claiming that “it is not Ukraine that will decide when to stop and start talking [with Russia] seriously” about the end of the conflict, but that it is the West that will make this decision. Lavrov dismissed a question about recent media publications about the possibility of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, stating that “rumors are just that - rumors.” Lavrov claimed that the West – not Russia – is to blame for the absence of negotiations and threateningly stated that “those [in the West] who refuse [to negotiate] must understand that the longer they wait, the harder it will be to negotiate” and that “there is no hope that Russia will be ’defeated.’” Lavrov made similar statements on December 15, 2023, suggesting that the Kremlin believes that the longer the war continues, the more territory Russia will be able to occupy, and that the course of the war will increasingly weaken Ukraine’s negotiating position.[5]

Lavrov also claimed that support of the war has unified the Russian people and strengthened Russian identity. Lavrov claimed that the war contributed to the “cleansing of people who do not feel involved in” ethnic Russian history and culture and the history and culture of the Russian state.[6] Lavrov claimed that some of these people left Russia at the beginning of the war, but that an “overwhelming part of [Russian] society came together in an unprecedented way.” Lavrov's statements are meant to frame Russian society as unified around the war, despite heavy Kremlin efforts to crack down on any dissent and disproportionately amplify factions who support the war. Lavrov’s statements also indicate that the Kremlin continues to lack a unified position about the return to Russia of those citizens who previously left, as some Kremlin officials, including Putin, have celebrated the trend of Russians returning from abroad, whereas others have publicly threatened them.[7]

The battlespace in Ukraine continues to be the center of the technological offense-defense race between Russian and Ukrainian forces. Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Deputy Chief Major General Vadym Skibitskyi stated on January 18 that Russian forces "learn quickly enough" and have completely adapted the Kh-101 air-launched cruise missile compared to the model that Russia used in 2022.[8] Skibitsky stated that new Kh-101s are equipped with an active electronic warfare (EW) system and "thermal traps" to prevent the missiles from emitting trackable heat signatures.[9] Skibitsky noted that Ukrainian forces need to innovate and adapt in response to Russian adaptations to "prevent the loss of territories."[10] The GUR assessment of Russian technological innovation in the air domain is consistent with ISW's previous observations that Russian forces are adapting their methods and means for conducting strikes on Ukraine, and that Ukraine in turn must adapt and innovate with Western support to respond to such strikes.[11] Moscow Duma Deputy Andrei Medvedev identified similar adaptation-response dynamics in a January 18 post where he discussed the use of drones by both Russian and Ukrainian forces.[12] Medvedev stated that Russia has opted for the mass production of drones, leading to the production of large numbers of drones that lack the technological adaptations needed to compete with Ukrainian drones based on battlefield experience. Medvedev noted that Ukrainian forces are constantly improving their drones and warned that constant Ukrainian innovation may eventually make Russian mass-produced drones ineffective. Medvedev's discussion of the importance of constant technological adaptation and innovation on the battlefield emphasizes ISW's assessment that Russian and Ukrainian forces are engaged in a technological and tactical offense-defense race.[13]

Recent widespread GPS disruptions across Poland and the Baltic region are prompting speculation about the potential operation of Russian electronic warfare (EW) systems in the region. Polish outlet Radio Zet cited data from the GPSJAM GPS interference tracking site on January 16 that showed unprecedentedly high levels of GPS jamming across northern and eastern Poland, including across Warsaw and as far south as Łódź.[14] GPSJAM data also shows similarly high levels of GPS jamming across the southern Baltic Sea and northwestern and central Poland between December 25-27, 2023, and on January 10, 2024.[15] Polish media outlets suggested that the December 2023 outages may have been caused either by unspecified NATO military exercises in the Baltic region or could be linked to recent Russian EW tests in the Kaliningrad region.[16] Swedish Military Intelligence and Security Service (MUST) opened a case into the disturbances on January 12 in light of Russian Baltic Fleet EW exercises.[17] Swedish Lieutenant Colonel Joakim Paasikivi stated on January 6 that he believes that recent GPS interference levels are a result of "Russian influence activities or so-called hybrid warfare," and noted that Russia has previously interfered with GPS signals in northern Europe to protect Russian activities in Murmansk Oblast or disrupt NATO exercises.[18] Russian media reported that elements of the Russian Baltic Fleet have been training with the Borisoglebsk-2 EW system in Kaliningrad Oblast since mid-December 2023, which some sources linked to the disturbances.[19] ISW cannot independently verify the cause of the GPS jamming levels at this time, but the suggestion that Russian EW capabilities in Kaliningrad Oblast could so significantly impact Poland and the Baltic region is notable.

The French Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced on January 18 that it launched an “artillery coalition” to strengthen support for Ukraine amid continued Ukrainian statements that Russian forces in Ukraine have superior artillery capabilities.[20] The French MoD stated that it launched the “Artillery for Ukraine” coalition – one of five "capability" coalitions within the Contact Group for the Defense of Ukraine, which also include coalitions that aim to help support Ukraine with air defense, armored vehicles, air force capabilities, and maritime security.[21] The French MoD stated the “artillery coalition,” which France will co-chair with the US, will provide Ukrainian forces with artillery capabilities in the short term and aims to build out Ukrainian artillery capabilities in the long term through industrial partnerships.[22] French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu also announced that France will deliver six Caesar artillery systems to Ukraine in the coming weeks and supply 50 AASM Hammer glide bombs to Ukraine per month starting in January 2024.[23] Lecornu stated that France can produce 72 Caesar artillery systems for Ukraine in 2024 and will spend 50 million euros ($54.3 million) to finance the production of 12 of the Caesar systems, but that France will need partner support to finance the 60 other systems.[24]

Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov stated that ammunition shortages are an urgent problem for Ukrainian forces and that Russian efforts to expand Russia’s defense industrial base (DIB) have enabled Russian forces to launch tens of thousands of artillery projectiles at Ukrainian positions every day.[25] Umerov stated that Russian artillery fire exceeds Ukrainian artillery fire at ratios between five-to-one and ten-to-one depending on the sector of the front and combat intensity.[26] Ukrainian officials have previously indicated that a combination of artillery ammunition shortages and delays in the provision of Western security assistance is likely causing Ukrainian forces to husband materiel.[27] Umerov stated that improved artillery capabilities are a key necessity for winning the war and that Ukraine is pursuing efforts to expand shell production.[28] Ukraine is also currently expanding its production of first-person view (FPV) drones to offset the impacts of artillery ammunition shortages with the goal of producing one million FPV drones in 2024.[29]

Ukrainian partisans and satellite imagery confirmed that Ukrainian strikes against occupied Crimea in late December 2023 sank a Russian Tarantul-class corvette near Sevastopol. The Crimean-based “Atesh” Ukrainian partisan group reported on January 18 that it discovered a sunken Tarantul-class corvette in Hrafska Bay, Sevastopol, and satellite imagery of the Atesh-provided coordinates confirms that the corvette sank between December 28 and 31, 2023.[30] Russian and Crimean occupation officials claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian air and naval drone strikes against Sevastopol on December 28 and 30, 2023.[31] This confirmation of a previously unaccounted-for successful Ukrainian strike indicates that Ukraine‘s recent strike campaign against occupied Crimea may have been more successful than has been confirmed thus far by open sources.[32] Ukrainian forces previously conducted a successful strike campaign against Russian Black Sea Fleet (BSF) assets in summer 2023 that forced Russian forces to move ships away from its main base in occupied Sevastopol, Crimea.[33]

The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reportedly conducted a successful drone strike on Russian military facilities in Leningrad Oblast on January 18. A source within the GUR told Ukrainian outlet Suspilne on January 18 that there were confirmed strikes against unspecified targets in Leningrad Oblast and noted that Russian military facilities in St. Petersburg are “within reach” of Ukrainian forces.[34] Russian media stated that Russian electronic warfare (EW) systems suppressed two Ukrainian drones over the Gulf of Finland and that Russian forces shot down a third Ukrainian drone near the St. Petersburg oil terminal.[35] A Russian source claimed that this is the first attempted Ukrainian strike on Leningrad Oblast in the course of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.[36] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that it intercepted one drone over Leningrad Oblast in the early morning hours of January 18.[37]

Russian forces conducted a series of drone and missile strikes against Ukraine on the night of January 17 to 18. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian forces launched 33 Shahed-136/131 drones at unspecified targets throughout Ukraine and two S-300 ground-to-air missiles in the direction of Kharkiv Oblast.[38] Ukrainian air defenses downed 22 Shaheds and an unspecified number of Shaheds did not strike their intended targets.[39] Ukrainian Kharkiv Oblast Military Administration Head Oleh Synehubov reported that Russian S-300 missiles struck Chuhuiv in Kharkiv Oblast.[40]

The European Union (EU) Parliament voted to endorse another step in a rule of law procedure that could eventually suspend Hungary’s voting rights after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban vetoed an EU vote for further military assistance to Ukraine. The EU Parliament endorsed both a condemnation of Orban’s recent veto of assistance to Ukraine and a nonbinding resolution that calls on EU member states to “take action and to determine whether Hungary has committed serious and persistent breaches of EU values” in accordance with the EU’s rule of law framework.[41] The EU rule of law framework establishes a three-step process, including an assessment, recommendation, and follow-up monitoring, to determine and prevent any threats to the rule of law in the EU.[42] The EU notably declared in 2022 that it can no longer consider Hungary a ”full democracy” but rather a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy,” as Hungary’s ”respect for democratic norms and standards is absent.”[43] Reuters noted that a possible deprivation of Hungary‘s EU voting rights through this procedure in accordance with EU Treaty Article 7 is unlikely to occur quickly and that the EU vote aims to pressure Orban ahead of the EU leaders’ summit on February 1, which will include discussions for further assistance to Ukraine.[44]

Russia and the Central African Republic (CAR) are in negotiations regarding Russian military basing in CAR. Russian Ambassador to CAR Alexander Bikantov stated that Russia’s and CAR’s defense ministries are discussing the creation of a Russian military base in CAR and are currently selecting the base’s location.[45] Russian outlet RBK reported that the Russian Embassy in CAR stated that Russian and Central African officials have not yet finalized the size of the potential Russian contingent in CAR or the date of its arrival.[46] Kremlin-backed outlet Africa Initiative reported on January 16 that CAR Presidential Advisor Fidel Ngouandika stated that CAR wants Russia to build a military base in the country and that CAR’s government has “already provided a site in Beringo, 80km from Bangui, where there is an international airport.”[47] The site in Beringo reportedly can accommodate up to 10,000 personnel.[48] The Kremlin continues efforts to expand Russia‘s influence in Africa through the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) controlled Africa Corps and is likely attempting to expand the Africa Corps’ operations in Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, and CAR.[49] The Russian military’s apparent ability to negotiate deploying expeditionary forces to the CAR indicates that Russia has offset some of the acute manpower shortages that the Russian military experienced in 2022 and 2023. The Russian military hastily redeployed forces from Russia’s (small) foreign bases in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan Armenia, and Syria, to Russia in 2022, likely in response to acute personnel shortages from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.[50]

Key Takeaways:

• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated that Russia’s maximalist objectives in Ukraine remain unchanged and that Russia is not interested in negotiations with Ukraine or the West.
• The battlespace in Ukraine continues to be the center of the technological offense-defense race between Russian and Ukrainian forces.
• Recent widespread GPS disruptions across Poland and the Baltic region are prompting speculation about the potential operation of Russian electronic warfare (EW) systems in the region.
• The French Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced on January 18 that it launched an “artillery coalition” to strengthen support for Ukraine amid continued Ukrainian statements that Russian forces in Ukraine have superior artillery capabilities.
• Ukrainian partisans and satellite imagery confirmed that Ukrainian strikes against occupied Crimea in late December 2023 sank a Russian Tarantul-class corvette near Sevastopol.
• The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reportedly conducted a successful drone strike on Russian military facilities in Leningrad Oblast on January 18.
• The European Union (EU) Parliament voted to endorse another step in a rule of law procedure that could eventually suspend Hungary’s voting rights after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban vetoed an EU vote for further military assistance to Ukraine.
• Russia and the Central African Republic (CAR) are in negotiations regarding Russian military basing in CAR.
• Russian forces made confirmed advances near Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area amid continued positional engagements along the front.
• Russian officials continue to target naturalized migrants as part of ongoing crypto-mobilization efforts.
• Russian occupation authorities continue efforts to restore logistics infrastructure in occupied Ukraine.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports. 

• Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Russian Technological Adaptations
• Ukrainian Defense Industrial Base Efforts
• Activities in Russian-Occupied Areas
• Russian Information Operations and Narratives
• Significant Activity in Belarus

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian and Ukrainian forces continued positional engagements along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on January 18, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in this area. Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional fighting continued northeast of Kupyansk near Synkivka; east of Kupyansk near Petropavlivka; southeast of Kupyansk near Tabaivka and Berestove; northwest of Kreminna near Makiivka; west of Kreminna near Terny, Torske, and Yampolivka; southwest of Kreminna near Dibrova and the Serebryanske forest area; and south of Kreminna near Hryhorivka and Bilohorivka (12km south of Kreminna).[51] A Russian source claimed that Russian forces are seven kilometers away from Kupyansk, although open sources have only permitted ISW to assess that the closest Russian positions near Kupyansk are roughly eight kilometers from the settlement.[52] Ukrainian Ground Forces Commander Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi stated that Russian forces continue concentrating their offensive actions in the Kupyansk direction on capturing Synkivka.[53] Ukrainian Ground Forces Command Spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Volodymyr Fityo stated that Russian forces conducted 54 drone strikes in the Kupyansk and Lyman directions whereas Russian forces previously did not launch more than 30 drone strikes in a day.[54] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces in the Lyman direction are focusing offensive operations on Bilohorivka and intend to encircle and capture the rest of the settlement.[55]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian sources, including the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), claimed that Russian forces captured Vesele (northeast of Bakhmut) on January 18, but ISW has not yet observed visual confirmation of this claim.[56] RT Editor-in-chief and veteran Russian propagandist Margarita Simonyan claimed that the capture of Vesele is important because it will give Russian forces access to the T0513 Siversk-Bakhmut road and open a new route of attack towards Siversk itself (23km north of Vesele).[57] Russian forces’ prospects for conducting operationally significant offensive towards Siversk in the near term are doubtful, however. Russian forces have held positions 9 kilometers east of Siversk for a considerable amount of time but have not been able to significantly threaten Siversk from their current positions, so the purported capture of Vesele (which is further away from Siversk than other Russian positions) is unlikely to substantially aid a potential Russian effort to advance towards Siversk in the near term. The terrain immediately west of Vesele that Russian forces would need to cross to reach the T0513 route is additionally uphill on local tactical heights that Ukrainian forces currently control, which could complicate Russian forces' ability to advance. One Russian milblogger claimed that Vesele is still a contested grey zone, however.[58] Russian milbloggers reported heavy fighting on the outskirts of Vesele and near Spirne (northeast of Vesele).[59]

Russian forces recently made a confirmed advance northwest of Bakhmut. Geolocated footage published on January 17 shows that Russian forces recently made a marginal gain in the residential area in northern Bohdanivka (northwest of Bakhmut).[60] Ukrainian Ground Forces Spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Volodymyr Fityo reported on January 18 that Russian forces continue to intensify their efforts in the Bakhmut direction.[61] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Russian forces are trying to take control of the O0506 Khromove-Chasiv Yar route.[62] Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional engagements continued northwest of Bakhmut near Hryhorivka and Bohdanivka, west of Bakhmut near Khromove and Ivanivske, and southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka and Andriivka.[63] Elements of the Russian 98th Guards Airborne (VDV) Division are reportedly operating northwest of Bakhmut.[64]

Russian forces recently made a confirmed advance southwest of Avdiivka. Geolocated footage published on January 17 shows Russian forces assaulting and capturing a position east of Nevelske (southwest of Avdiivka).[65] Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Commander Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi stated on January 18 that Russian forces likely in the Avdiivka direction are actively using armored vehicles to support and deploy dismounted infantry and that these tactics have led Russian forces to lose 41 armored vehicles, including 17 tanks, in the area in the past three days.[66] Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Oleksandr Shtupun noted that Russian forces typically use one or two tanks, several armored personnel carriers, and MT-LBs (tracked armored fighting vehicles) to transport infantry before withdrawing quickly, upon which Ukrainian forces strike the armored vehicles.[67] Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional engagements continued northwest of Avdiivka near Stepove, Novokalynove, and Novobakhmutivka; near the Coke Plant in northwestern Avdivka and the industrial zone in southeastern Avdiivka; west of Avdiivka near Sieverne; and southwest of Avdiivka near Pervomaiske and Nevelske.[68]

Positional engagements continued west and southwest of Donetsk City on January 18, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in this area. Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that fighting continued near Marinka, Heorhiivka, and Krasnohorivka (all west of Donetsk City) and Novomykhailivka (southwest of Donetsk City).[69] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces are trying to develop an offensive towards Kurakhove (15km west of Marinka) and are trying to bypass Novomykhailivka from the south while attacking from the north.[70]

Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Positional fighting continued in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on January 18. Geolocated footage published on January 18 shows that Russian forces previously marginally advanced southeast of Rivnopil (southwest of Velyka Novosilka), but this is unlikely a recent advance.[71] Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional fighting continued west of Staromayorske and south of Urozhaine (both south of Velyka Novosilka) as well as north of Novodonetske (southeast of Velyka Novosilka).[72]

Positional fighting continued in western Zaporizhia Oblast on January 18, but there were no confirmed changes to the front line. Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional fighting continued near Robotyne; northwest of Robotyne near Pyatykhatky; south of Robotyne near Novoprokopivka; and east of Robotyne near Verbove.[73] Elements of the Russian 429th Motorized Rifle Regiment (19th Motorized Rifle Division, 58th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District) reportedly operate in the Zaporizhia direction, and elements of the Chechen “Vostok-Akhmat” Battalion reportedly operate in the Robotyne direction.[74]

Ukrainian and Russian forces continued positional engagements on the east (left) bank of the Dnipro River on January 18. Russian milbloggers claimed that an element of the Russian 810th Naval Infantry Brigade (Black Sea Fleet) made a partial advance into Krynky but that Ukrainian forces still firmly control positions within the settlement.[75] ISW has still not observed confirmation of this claimed Russian advance into Krynky. Geolocated footage published on January 18 shows that a Ukrainian HIMARS strike destroyed a Russian electronic warfare (EW) system in Nova Kakhovka.[76]

Ukrainian Air Force Spokesperson Colonel Yuriy Ihnat stated on January 17 that Ukraine’s recent destruction of a Russian A-50 long-range radar detection aircraft and Il-22 airborne command post aircraft has temporarily degraded Russia’s air operations over the Sea of Azov.[77] Ihnat stated that only one or two Russian planes currently patrol the Sea of Azov. Ihnat stated that Russian forces previously flew two A-50s near the Sea of Azov in conjunction with an Il-22 as well as a third A-50 in eastern Ukraine.[78] Ihnat noted that Russian forces will adapt to the loss of these aircraft, however.

Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

Russian officials continue to target naturalized migrants as part of ongoing crypto-mobilization efforts. Russian opposition outlet Astra stated on January 18 that Russian officials issued military summonses to at least 15 foreigners immediately after their citizenship ceremony in St. Petersburg.[79] Russian officials similarly issued summonses at a naturalization ceremony in St. Petersburg on December 20.[80] ISW continues to assess that the Russian government is struggling to reconcile the discordant and competing objectives of exploiting migrant labor to alleviate Russian labor shortages and prioritizing crypto-mobilization efforts to send migrants to the frontline.[81]

Select former Wagner Group fighters are reportedly trying to maintain their clout within Russian regular units. Russian human rights project Gulagu.net stated on January 18 that former Wagner Group penal recruits, who are reportedly now serving in an assault company in the 331st Airborne (VDV) Regiment in Ukraine, sent a video message and evidence to Gulagu.net about how the former Wagner fighters conducted an independent “special operation" to detain Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) State Road Safety Inspectorate police lieutenant Alexander Makartsev, who, they claimed, trafficked drugs to Russian military personnel in occupied Luhansk Oblast.[82] Gulagu.net stated that the former Wagner fighters claimed that they handed over evidence to the Federal Security Service (FSB)’s military counterintelligence department but that the FSB turned them away. Gulagu.net stated that Makartsev’s relatives reported him missing and claimed that the former Wagner fighters stole 500,000 rubles and gold from him. The Russian Special Rapid Reaction Squad (SOBR) and MVD Internal Security Department reportedly opened a case against the former Wagner fighters and detained two of them for robbery and kidnapping. Gulagu.net stated that the former Wagner fighters appealed to Gulagu.net because Russian Special Rapid Reaction Squad (SOBR) and Spetsnaz units are allegedly going to “storm” (likely prosecute) them.

Russian Technological Adaptations (Russian objective: Introduce technological innovations to optimize systems for use in Ukraine)

Kremlin newswire TASS reported on January 18 that the Russian Stratim Design Bureau has begun development of a budget analogue of the Iranian Shahed drone called the “Yastreb” (Hawk) with a range of 350 kilometers.[83] Stratim stated that prototype flight tests are currently ongoing, and that there are plans to begin flight tests on a finished, redesigned product in the first half of 2024. Stratim claimed that Russian forces will use the Yastreb drone as a decoy to distract Ukrainian air defense systems – a tactic Russian forces have employed previously in strike series in Ukraine.[84]

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited the “Raduga” State Machine Building Design Bureau (GosMKB “Raduga”), a subsidiary of Tactical Missile Corporation (KTRV), in Moscow Oblast on January 18.[85] KTRV General Director Boris Obnosov responded to Shoigu’s demand that the enterprise increase the range of an unspecified weapon from 250 kilometers to over 300 kilometers, claiming that they have already tested an unspecified weapon with a range of 310 kilometers. Obnosov claimed that GosMKB “Raduga” has reduced the cost of this weapon’s production and increased its warhead from 450 kilograms to 800 kilograms. GosMKB “Raduga” General Director Sergei Bogatikov claimed that the enterprise has doubled its workforce, bought new test equipment and tools, increased its production space, and established 12-hour shifts that allow for 24-hour operations and increased production. Bogatikov claimed that some indicators show that GosMKB “Raduga” increased its production volume of high-precision weapons by a multiple of eight since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian Defense Industrial Efforts (Ukrainian objective: Develop its defense industrial base to become more self-sufficient in cooperation with US, European, and international partners)

Click here to read ISW’s new analysis on Ukrainian long-term efforts to develop a self-sufficient DIB with US and European support.

Ukrainian National Defense and Security Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov stated on January 18 that Ukraine is one of the top three drone manufacturers in the world and that private companies in Ukraine are currently supplying weapons to Ukrainian forces.[86] The Kyiv City Council announced that it will allocate 500 million hryvnias ($13.27 million) to purchase drones for Ukrainian forces in 2024.[87]

Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko stated on January 18 that Ukraine is focused on developing its defense industrial base (DIB) in 2024 and plans to launch five joint ventures with Western arms manufacturers in Ukraine, including technological exchange partnerships with Day and Zimmermann, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon.[88]

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski stated on January 18 that Poland is preparing a new military assistance package for Ukraine and plans to increase its own domestic production of ammunition and military equipment.[89]

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian occupation authorities continue efforts to restore logistics infrastructure in occupied Ukraine. Russian rail company Novorossiya Railways’ Luhansk Oblast branch First Deputy Director Nikolai Baboido claimed that Russia has begun restoring railway tracks in occupied Luhansk Oblast as part of the “Railways of Novorossiya” initiative and that Russia intends to build a railway between Moscow and Luhansk City.[90] The establishment of new rail lines in occupied Ukraine will increase the difficulty for Ukrainian forces to disrupt Russian logistics as new Russian construction will reduce vulnerabilities from existing infrastructure bottlenecks.

Russian occupation authorities continue efforts to crack down against pro-Ukrainian actors and strengthen control of the information space in occupied Ukraine. Ukrainian Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov reported that a new Russian law will allow Russian federal censor Rozkomnadzor to track down “dissenters” in occupied Ukraine by IP address through local internet providers and track users’ online activities and locations.[91] The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that Russian forces are trying to strengthen counterintelligence activities in occupied Ukraine and plan to increase the number of mobile groups conducting searches of locals.[92]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian sources are attempting to portray Armenia as regretful for its “mistakes” in straying away from Russia while casting Russian-led peace negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan as more “promising” than Western efforts. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed on January 18 that Western advice is hindering the normalization of Armenia-Azerbaijan relations and claimed that Russian-led negotiations are “promising.”[93] The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) announced on January 17 that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin met with Armenian Ambassador to Russia Vagharshak Harutyunyan to discuss Armenian-Azerbaijani normalization and the revival of the trilateral Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiation format.[94] Russian milbloggers claimed on January 18 that the meeting indicates that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is ready to “grovel” and ”bow down to Moscow,” although one milblogger warned that Armenia’s renewed interest in Russian-led negotiations could be a “diplomatic trap.”[95]

Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukraine is conducting information operations to spoil Russian influence in Kazakhstan.[96] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian information operations are using “any excuses and means” possible to spread "Russophobia" in Kazakhstan and that the West is attempting to surround Russia with a ”hostile circle of states.”[97] Another prominent Russian milblogger baselessly claimed that the United Kingdom controls Ukraine’s anti-Russian information operations in Kazakhstan.[98] Russian milbloggers have recently criticized the Kazakh government for efforts to rename rail stations to Kazakh language names from Russian names and have accused Kazakhstan of increasingly drifting towards the West.[99]

Significant Activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko repeatedly emphasized on January 18 that Belarus is a sovereign country during discussions about ongoing Russia-Belarus Union State integration efforts.[100] Lukashenko has routinely attempted to underscore that Belarus is a sovereign state and equal partner to Russia within the Union State structure amid the Kremlin’s efforts to exert control and achieve Russia's desired de facto annexation of Belarus.[101]

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

3. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, January 18, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-january-18-2024

Key Takeaways:

• The Pakistani armed forces conducted cross-border attacks targeting Baloch separatists in three locations near Saravan, Iran. Iranian officials and state media attempted to deescalate after the Pakistani airstrikes.
• The Houthi supreme leader, Abdulmalik al Houthi, stated that US and UK vessels have become legitimate targets for Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. Kataib Hezbollah Secretary General Abu Hussein al Hamidawi said that the group would interpret an attack on the Houthis as an attack on KH in a letter to the Houthi supreme leader.
• Palestinian fighters are attacking Israeli forces in the northern Gaza Strip where Israeli forces previously conducted clearing operations. This activity is consistent with CTP-ISW's assessment that Hamas is likely reinfiltrating some of these areas.
• Israeli forces destroyed Hamas’ main weapons manufacturing facility in the Central Governorate of the Gaza Strip. Israeli clearing operations are likely one of the factors constraining Palestinian militias‘ ability to conduct indirect fire attacks into Israel.
• The IDF Givati Brigade (assigned to the 162nd Division) raided an outpost of Hamas’ Southern Khan Younis Battalion in southern Khan Younis City. Palestinian fighters launched multiple attacks targeting Israeli forces in and around Khan Younis City.
• Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters six times across the West Bank. Israeli forces continued raids targeting Palestinian fighters in the Tulkarm refugee camp.
• Lebanese Hezbollah claimed five attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel. Unspecified fighters launched three rockets into the Golan Heights from Syria as well.
• Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces Chairman Faleh al Fayyadh, Iranian-backed Badr Organization Secretary General Hadi al Ameri, and State of Law Coalition head Nouri al Maliki discussed efforts to “strengthen national sovereignty” in a meeting.
• Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al Sudani reiterated that he seeks to restructure the presence of US-led coalition forces in Iraq during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
• Iranian Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Akbar Ahmadian discussed the January 15 IRGC drone and missile strikes in Erbil, Iraq, with Iraqi National Security Adviser Qassem al Araji in a phone call.
• The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed responsibility for a drone attack targeting US forces in Himu, northeastern Syria.
• The Jordanian Royal Air Force conducted airstrikes targeting Iranian-linked drug smuggling operations in southern Syria.

IRAN UPDATE, JANUARY 18, 2024

Jan 18, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, January 18, 2024

Ashka Jhaveri, Amin Soltani, Johanna Moore, Andie Parry, Annika Ganzeveld, Peter Mills, Kathryn Tyson, Alexandra Braverman, Brian Carter, and Nicholas Carl

Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm EST

The Iran Update provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities abroad that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. It also covers events and trends that affect the stability and decision-making of the Iranian regime. The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides these updates regularly based on regional events. For more on developments in Iran and the region, see our interactive map of Iran and the Middle East.

Note: CTP and ISW have refocused the update to cover the Israel-Hamas war. The new sections address developments in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as noteworthy activity from Iran’s Axis of Resistance. We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Key Takeaways:

• The Pakistani armed forces conducted cross-border attacks targeting Baloch separatists in three locations near Saravan, Iran. Iranian officials and state media attempted to deescalate after the Pakistani airstrikes.
• The Houthi supreme leader, Abdulmalik al Houthi, stated that US and UK vessels have become legitimate targets for Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. Kataib Hezbollah Secretary General Abu Hussein al Hamidawi said that the group would interpret an attack on the Houthis as an attack on KH in a letter to the Houthi supreme leader.
• Palestinian fighters are attacking Israeli forces in the northern Gaza Strip where Israeli forces previously conducted clearing operations. This activity is consistent with CTP-ISW's assessment that Hamas is likely reinfiltrating some of these areas.
• Israeli forces destroyed Hamas’ main weapons manufacturing facility in the Central Governorate of the Gaza Strip. Israeli clearing operations are likely one of the factors constraining Palestinian militias‘ ability to conduct indirect fire attacks into Israel.
• The IDF Givati Brigade (assigned to the 162nd Division) raided an outpost of Hamas’ Southern Khan Younis Battalion in southern Khan Younis City. Palestinian fighters launched multiple attacks targeting Israeli forces in and around Khan Younis City.
• Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters six times across the West Bank. Israeli forces continued raids targeting Palestinian fighters in the Tulkarm refugee camp.
• Lebanese Hezbollah claimed five attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel. Unspecified fighters launched three rockets into the Golan Heights from Syria as well.
• Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces Chairman Faleh al Fayyadh, Iranian-backed Badr Organization Secretary General Hadi al Ameri, and State of Law Coalition head Nouri al Maliki discussed efforts to “strengthen national sovereignty” in a meeting.
• Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al Sudani reiterated that he seeks to restructure the presence of US-led coalition forces in Iraq during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
• Iranian Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Akbar Ahmadian discussed the January 15 IRGC drone and missile strikes in Erbil, Iraq, with Iraqi National Security Adviser Qassem al Araji in a phone call.
• The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed responsibility for a drone attack targeting US forces in Himu, northeastern Syria.
• The Jordanian Royal Air Force conducted airstrikes targeting Iranian-linked drug smuggling operations in southern Syria.

The Pakistani armed forces conducted cross-border attacks targeting Baloch separatists in three locations near Saravan, Iran, on January 17.[1] Pakistan announced that it fired a combination of drones, rockets, and air-launched standoff munitions to target Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA) and Baluchistan Liberation Front (BLF) sites in Iran.[2] The BLA and BLF are Baloch ethno-separatist groups that maintain ongoing insurgencies inside Pakistan. Pakistan framed the strikes as responses to Iran’s failure to prevent Baloch separatist groups based in Iran from conducting attacks inside Pakistan.[3] Pakistani media reported that the strikes killed and/or injured seven BLF fighters.[4] Pakistani Foreign Affairs Ministry officials emphasized that the strikes did not target the Iranian regime. The Pakistani strikes follow the IRGC’s drone and missile strikes on two Jaish al Adl headquarters in Koh Sabz, Baluchistan Province, Pakistan on January 16.[5]

Iranian officials and state media attempted to deescalate after the Pakistani airstrikes on Saravan, Sistan and Baluchistan Province on January 18. The Iranian Foreign Affairs Ministry summoned the Pakistani Charge d’affaires and condemned the Pakistani strikes but added that Iran will not allow unspecified “enemies” to strain the “good and brotherly” relations between Iran and Pakistan.[6] Media outlets tied to the Iranian armed forces highlighted that the Pakistani strikes did not target the Iranian state, referencing the statement from the Pakistani Foreign Affairs Ministry. The outlets also emphasized that Pakistan respects Iran’s territorial integrity.[7] Several national and provincial Iranian security officials reported that there were 10 to 12 civilian causalities from the strikes but added that those individuals were not Iranian nationals.[8]

The Houthi supreme leader, Abdulmalik al Houthi, stated that US and UK vessels have become legitimate targets for Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.[9] Abdulmalik made the statement in a speech criticizing US support for Israel on January 18 after US strikes targeted 14 ready-to-launch missiles in Houthi territory on January 17.[10] The Houthis claimed that they attacked an “American ship” for the first time on January 15.[11] The group previously claimed falsely that it targeted only vessels that aided Israel, were bound for Israel, or were Israeli-owned.[12] The Houthis have repeatedly targeted merchant vessels without connections to Israel, however.[13] Abdulmalik made veiled threats on January 11 that the Houthi attacks would target the vessels of other countries that supported US strikes on Houthi military targets.[14]

Kataib Hezbollah (KH) Secretary General Abu Hussein al Hamidawi said that KH would interpret an attack on the Houthis as an attack on KH in a letter to the Houthi supreme leader on January 17.[15] Houthi Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister and influential powerbroker Hussein al Ezzi threatened on January 16 that the Houthis could expand their targeting of commercial shipping beyond the Bab al Mandeb through coordination with unspecified actors.[16] These statements are meant to underscore further to the international audience the extent to which Iran’s ”Axis of Resistance” can fight as a regional coalition. KH is a member of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which has claimed over 100 attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria since the Israel-Hamas war began.[17]

The United States conducted preemptive strikes on January 17 and 18 that targeted Houthi missiles prepared to fire on merchant vessels.[18] CENTCOM stated the missiles posed an imminent threat to merchant vessels and US Navy ships in the region and that the US strikes will degrade the Houthi’s capability to continue attacks on international shipping. Local Yemeni sources reported that the first round of strikes hit five governorates in Yemen.[19]

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Erode the will of the Israeli political establishment and public to launch and sustain a major ground operation into the Gaza Strip
• Degrade IDF material and morale around the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian fighters are attacking Israeli forces in the northern Gaza Strip where Israeli forces previously conducted clearing operations. This activity is consistent with CTP-ISW's assessment that Hamas is likely reinfiltrating some of these areas. Palestinian militia activity increased slightly during the past week in the northern Gaza Strip after Israeli forces reduced their presence there and transitioned to targeted raids. The al Qassem Brigades—the militant wing of Hamas—fired rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) at Israeli armored personnel carriers east of Tuffah neighborhood in Gaza City.[20] The militia also fired a thermobaric rocket at Israeli forces in Sheikh Ijlin.[21] The militia separately claimed five attacks targeting Israeli armor and dismounted infantry east of Jabalia using mortars and RPGs.[22] The military wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the al Quds Brigades, fired anti-tank guided missiles and small arms targeting Israeli forces as they advanced east of Jabalia.[23] A Palestinian activist reported on January 18 that Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters clashed on the outskirts of Jabalia.[24]

Israeli forces continue to operate in the northern Gaza Strip to destroy militia infrastructure and locate remaining Palestinian fighters. The IDF Air Force conducted several airstrikes on January 18, targeting Palestinian fighters who posed a threat to Israeli ground forces.[25] The Yiftach Brigade (assigned to the 99th Division) identified Palestinian fighters rigging a vehicle to explode, which later detonated during a firefight.[26] The 179th Brigade (assigned to the 99th Division) located explosively formed penetrators (EFP), RPGs, and military equipment in Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City on January 18.[27]

Israeli forces destroyed Hamas’ main weapons manufacturing facility in the Central Governorate of the Gaza Strip. The facility included weapons manufacturing sites, including some meant for rockets, and a command-and-control site located along the Salah al Din Road west of Bureij.[28] Israeli forces recently located additional manufacturing facilities in Maghazi, Bureij, and Nuseirat.[29] The IDF 36th Division, Yahalom Combat Engineering Unit, and Israeli air elements discovered and destroyed dozens of tunnel shafts that connected hundreds of kilometers of underground passages.[30] The New York Times reported on January 16 that the IDF now believes that there are more tunnels underneath the Gaza Strip than previously thought.[31]

Israeli clearing operations are likely one of the factors constraining Palestinian militias‘ ability to conduct indirect fire attacks into Israel. Israeli forces have destroyed several rocket launchers and stockpiles during clearing operations in the Gaza Strip.[32] The rate of cross-border indirect fire attacks claimed by Palestinian militias from the Gaza Strip decreased from an average of roughly 13 daily attacks between October 11 and November 23 to an average of roughly 4.6 attacks between December 1 and January 18. The humanitarian pause lasted from November 23 to December 1. Militia fighters continue to use mortars and rockets to defend against Israeli ground operations in the Gaza Strip, however.[33]

The IDF Givati Brigade (assigned to the 162nd Division) raided an outpost of Hamas’ Southern Khan Younis Battalion in southern Khan Younis City on January 18.[34] The battalion‘s outpost included office space and multiple training facilities. The outpost served as the office for the battalion‘s commander and other unspecified Hamas commanders. The IDF seized intelligence files, "combat management documents,” and various small arms and explosives. Israeli forces conducted airstrikes targeting Palestinian fighters while operating in southern Khan Younis area.[35]

Palestinian fighters launched multiple attacks targeting Israeli forces in and around Khan Younis City on January 18. The al Qassem Brigades targeted Israeli armored and engineering units in Khan Younis City using Yassin 105 anti-tank RPGs.[36] The al Qassem Brigades claimed that it detonated a house borne IED (HBIED) in Bani Suheila, killing and wounding 30 Israeli soldiers clearing the building.[37] The al Qassem Brigades did not provide evidence for its assertion. Al Qassem Brigades fighters targeted Israeli forces in a house in eastern Khan Younis using a thermobaric munition, killing five Israeli soldiers.[38] The National Resistance Brigades—the military wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP)—claimed that its fighters targeted an Israeli armored vehicle using a tandem charged rocket in Batn al Sameen in western Khan Younis City.[39] The al Quds Brigades claimed its fighters fought Israeli forces advancing in central, eastern, and southern Khan Younis City.[40]

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released evidence of Gazan Education Ministry staff participating in military training as part of the al Qassem Brigades.[41] The IDF posted three images showing official al Qassem Brigades documents requesting certain teachers be given leave for training. The IDF said that the al Qassem Brigades delivered the letters directly to the head of the Gazan Education Ministry in Khan Younis.[42]

Israeli forces killed the Hamas officer responsible for interrogating suspected spies in the Gaza Strip on January 17. The IDF reported that the officer's death “significantly impacts” Hamas’ ability to develop and enhance its capabilities to strengthen and improve itself as an organization.[43] 

The Gaza Strip continues to experience the longest, largest-scale internet blackout since the Israel-Hamas war began. NetBlocks reported on January 18 that the Gaza Strip entered the seventh day of the telecommunications blackout.[44]

The al Qassem Brigades fired rockets from the Gaza Strip targeting Kissufim in southern Israel on January 18.[45]

Recorded reports of rocket attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward the West Bank and fix them there

Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters six times across the West Bank on January 18.[46] The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades—the self-proclaimed militant wing of Fatah—fired small arms and detonated IEDs targeting Israeli forces in Zawata, near Nablus. The group also clashed with Israeli forces in Qalqilya, injuring an Israeli Border Police officer.[47]

Israeli forces continued raids targeting Palestinian fighters in the Tulkarm refugee camp on January 18.[48] The operations have been ongoing for over 35 hours at the time of writing. The IDF said that it has arrested 15 wanted individuals and destroyed weapons, explosives, and military equipment.[49] The IDF also said that Israeli forces have killed eight Palestinian fighters during operations in the Tulkarm camp, including in an Israeli airstrike.[50] The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and al Quds Brigades clashed with Israeli forces in Tulkarm and the Tulkarm refugee camp, respectively, during the operations.[51]

An attacker attempted to stab Israeli police officers at a bus stop in Jerusalem on January 18.[52] The attacker wounded two people before Israeli police killed the attacker. An Israeli source said that the attacker is suspected of carrying out a separate attack on a tourist in Tel Aviv earlier on January 18. The motive of the attack is unclear.

This map is not an exhaustive depiction of clashes and demonstrations in the West Bank.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward northern Israel and fix them there
• Set conditions for successive campaigns into northern Israel

Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) claimed five attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel on January 18.[53] LH continues to target Israeli military positions along the Israel-Lebanon border. The IDF Air Force attacked LH military infrastructure, including rocket launch sites, in multiple locations in southern Lebanon.[54]

Unspecified fighters launched three rockets into the Golan Heights from Syria on January 18.[55] Israeli forces responded by shelling the rocket launch sites in southern Syria.[56]

Unnamed Lebanese officials stated that LH rebuffed US proposals to deescalate fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border. Western media reported that LH rejected a US proposal to pull LH fighters seven kilometers away from the border with Israel.[57] Israeli and Western media reported that LH said that it will continue launching rockets targeting Israel until there is a full ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.[58] Unnamed Lebanese officials stated LH is open to the Lebanese government mediating a deal with Israel over unspecified disputed areas along the Israel-Lebanon border once the Israel-Hamas war ends.[59]

Recorded reports of attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Demonstrate the capability and willingness of Iran and the Axis of Resistance to escalate against the United States and Israel on multiple fronts
• Set conditions to fight a regional war on multiple fronts

Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) Chairman Faleh al Fayyadh, Iranian-backed Badr Organization Secretary General Hadi al Ameri, and State of Law Coalition head Nouri al Maliki discussed efforts to “strengthen national sovereignty” in a meeting on January 18.[60] Fayyadh, Ameri, and Maliki probably discussed the ongoing Iranian-backed military and political campaign to expel US forces from Iraq. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—has attacked US positions in Iraq and Syria over 100 times since the Israel-Hamas war began.[61] Several of these militias, such as Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba, are part of the PMF.[62] The militia attacks on US forces prompt US self-defense strikes, which Iranian-backed Iraqi actors then misrepresent as “violations” of Iraqi sovereignty. They use these supposed “violations” to pressure the Iraqi federal government to order the complete removal of US forces from Iraq. The United States reserves the right to protect its forces in Iraq, which are deployed at the invitation of the Iraqi federal government to fight ISIS.[63]

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al Sudani reiterated that he seeks to restructure the presence of US-led coalition forces in Iraq during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 17 and 18. Sudani stated that he plans to end the presence of US-led coalition forces in Iraq but remains open to cooperating with countries in the US-led coalition on “armament, training, and equipment.”[64] Sudani made this statement during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on January 17. NATO has a separate mission in Iraq that does not operate under the US-led coalition. Sudani similarly said in an interview with Reuters on January 10 that Iraq remains open to engaging in security cooperation with the United States, including with the United States advising and training the Iraqi Security Forces.[65] Sudani also told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on January 18 that he hopes to engage in “bilateral security coordination” with “friendly countries” following the withdrawal of US-led coalition forces.[66] These statements are consistent with CTP-ISW's assessment that Sudani is trying to retain some international military presence in Iraq, such as through bilateral security agreements with International Coalition member countries.[67] The continued presence of US forces would fail to meet Iranian-backed Iraqi militia demands for a complete and immediate withdrawal of all foreign forces from Iraq.

Iranian Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Akbar Ahmadian discussed the January 15 IRGC drone and missile strikes in Erbil, Iraq, with Iraqi National Security Adviser Qassem al Araji in a phone call on January 18.[68] Araji is also a member of the Iranian-backed Badr Organization.[69] The IRGC conducted drone and missile strikes targeting what it claimed were Israeli Mossad-affiliated facilities and individuals in Erbil.[70] Ahmadian emphasized that Iran will not tolerate any Israeli operation in Iraq. Iranian officials said on January 17 that the IRGC strikes in Erbil were targeting “Mossad agents,” not Iraq.[71] Iranian leaders have long accused Mossad of maintaining a network in Iraqi Kurdistan to facilitate operations into Iran. Iraqi state media did not widely cover the phone call between Ahmadian and Araji.

IRGC-affiliated media claimed that it likely killed a second Mossad-linked individual in the January 15 IRGC drone and missile strikes in Erbil, Iraq.[72] Iran did not provide evidence for these claims. Iraqi federal and Kurdish regional officials called Iran’s claims that Mossad operated a headquarters in Erbil as ”unfounded” and " baseless.”[73] Iranian state media alleged that Iraqi citizen Suleiman Amin Nader, also known as Azhi Amin, directed terrorist operations in Iran, including by aiding the assassination of senior Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhri Zadeh in November 2020. An Erbil-based, Kurdistan-focused freedom of expression and human rights watchdog reported that Azhi Amin was a PUK intelligence official who defected.[74] Amin began supporting Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) official and Kurdish Regional Prime Minister Masoud Barzani after his defection, according to the watchdog.[75] The watchdog also reported Amin was not present where the IRGC struck with drones and missiles. KDP media reported on January 17 that the strike in Erbil killed a prominent businessman, his daughter, and one of his employees at his house.[76]

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed responsibility for a drone attack targeting US forces in Himu, northeastern Syria, on January 18.[77] The Islamic Resistance in Iraq last targeted US forces in Himu on January 10.[78]

The Jordanian Royal Air Force conducted airstrikes targeting Iranian-linked drug smuggling operations in southern Syria on January 17.[79] The strikes targeted two sites in Suwayda Province—one warehouse and two houses.[80]

Iranian Law Enforcement Commander Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Radan traveled to China to increase security and law enforcement cooperation.[81] Radan met with Chinese Public Security Minister Wang Xiaohong and Chen Wenqing, a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Politburo who oversees intelligence, law enforcement, and legal affairs.[82] Radan discussed strengthening cooperation to combat cybercrimes, drug trafficking, organized crime, and terrorism.[83] Chinese state media reported that Radan and Wang side a memorandum of understanding to strengthen law enforcement cooperation.[84] Radan commented that he hopes the agreement will facilitate Sino-Iranian cooperation to combat terrorism.[85] Wang additionally proposed the formation of a trilateral security institution between China, Iran, and Pakistan to combat terrorism.[86]

Radan’s visit could be part of the Iranian effort to build an increasingly adaptive and sophisticated police and surveillance state.[87] Iranian leaders have tried to replicate the success that the CCP has had imposing social control over its respective population.[88] Iranian leaders have, in particular, embraced emerging technologies, such as advanced algorithms, artificial intelligence, and facial recognition, to this end.[89] Radan traveled to Moscow in June 2023 for similar discussions on increasing Iranian law enforcement and security cooperation with Russia.[90]

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian met with UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron in Davos on January 18.[91] Abdollahian said that the United States and United Kingdom have no right to hold the security of the region “hostage” to benefit Israel. Cameron asked Abdollahian to use Iran’s influence to stop Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.

Abdollahian discussed fighting regional terrorism with the Turkish Foreign Affairs Minister Hakan Fidan on January 18.[92] Abdollahian stated that it was necessary to maintain good relations between Iran and Turkey in light of ”some issues of recent days.” Abdollahian stated it was the responsibility of every country in the region to decisively fight terrorism. The Turkish Foreign Affairs Minister gave a statement following the call and urged Iran and Pakistan to avoid escalation in the region.[93]

Artesh Navy Commander Rear Admiral Shahram Erani announced on January 18 that the Alborz destroyer is escorting Iranian commercial ships in the Red Sea.[94] IRGC-affiliated media previously reported that the Alborz destroyer entered the Red Sea on January 1.[95] The Artesh is Iran’s conventional military and has larger surface combatants than the IRGC Navy. The Alborz has routinely conducted “anti-piracy” operations in the area since 2010 and operated around the Red Sea at least since December 2023.[96]

4. Israel Intensifies Raids Against Palestinians in West Bank

Israel Intensifies Raids Against Palestinians in West Bank

Israeli crackdowns aimed at preventing attacks risk stoking militancy, analysts say

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-intensifies-raids-against-palestinians-in-west-bank-424cb246?mod=latest_headlines

By Sune Engel RasmussenFollow, Omar Abdel-BaquiFollow and Fatima AbdulKarim

Jan. 19, 2024 6:40 am ET

RAMALLAH, West Bank—The Israeli-occupied West Bank has become an increasingly deadly front in a Middle East conflict that has spread beyond the war in Gaza, with near-daily Israeli raids into Palestinian villages and cities which Israel says are aimed at uprooting growing militant activity and preventing new attacks.

Early on Friday, Israeli security forces ended a two-day raid in Tulkarem, a West Bank city straddling the wall separating Palestinian communities and Israel that hasn’t been known as a hotbed of militancy in recent years, leaving at least eight Palestinians dead. 

The raids, which lasted for more than 35 hours, occurred in the city and its two refugee camps, Tulkarem and Nour Shams, where residents said Israeli forces destroyed homes and damaged infrastructure, including roads. The Israeli military said it uncovered explosives, weapons and a bomb factory. 

Since Israel launched its response to the deadly Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack, 357 Palestinians, of whom 90 were children, have been killed across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, according to the United Nations. Five Israelis, including four members of the security forces, have been killed in the West Bank over the same period, the U.N. said.

Israeli security officials refer to the West Bank as a third front in the war, after Gaza and the country’s northern border with Lebanon, where Israeli forces clash routinely with Hezbollah fighters and Palestinian militants. Yet its crackdown in the West Bank presents a security conundrum. 

A damaged ambulance in a refugee camp in Tulkarem following an Israeli raid. PHOTO: ZAIN JAAFAR/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

A destroyed house in the Nour Shams refugee camp. PHOTO: AFP CONTRIBUTOR#AFP/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Militants in the West Bank are fewer than in Gaza and not as well armed. Hamas has a more tenuous foothold there. But Israel says it is seeing a higher level of militant activity in the area and that its strikes are aimed at both thwarting imminent attacks and sending a message that it will crack down hard on such activity. Some analysts, however, say the crackdown risks having the opposite effect by stoking militancy.

“Civilians are being killed in these raids, which seems to be inviting more people to join militant groups rather than the opposite,” said Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, a Ramallah-based think tank. 

Shalom Ben Hanan, a former senior Israeli intelligence official said that the level of militancy in the West Bank is at its highest level since the second intifada, which ran from 2000 to 2005, with hundreds of intelligence alerts about likely attacks from the West Bank every day. Many of these attempted attacks are thwarted by Israel in time, he said. 

During clashes in Tulkarem, Palestinians threw pipe bombs and Israeli forces conducted airstrikes. The Israeli military said it had killed eight terrorists during the raids, but the U.N. said at least two of the killed were children.

Israel says it has detained about 2,700 people throughout the West Bank since the start of the war, including over 1,300 who it says are linked to Hamas. The Palestinian Prisoners Society, a nongovernmental organization that supports detainees in Israeli prisons, says the number of Palestinians who have been detained by Israel since Oct. 7 is around 6,000.

While a majority of Palestinians don’t support Hamas, polling shows that the Oct. 7 attack and the Israeli war in Gaza have increased the group’s popularity, particularly in the West Bank where 75% prefer the group to remain in power in Gaza. By comparison, 36% of Gazans said they preferred Hamas to stay in power, according to a poll released by the PCPSR in December.

The war has also eroded the standing of the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank and was widely unpopular among Palestinians before the current war partly due to their security coordination with Israel aimed at preventing violence. 

Israeli soldiers during an operation near Tulkarem. PHOTO: ALAA BADARNEH/SHUTTERSTOCK

Palestinians attend a funeral in the West Bank. PHOTO: AYMAN NOBANI/ZUMA PRESS

Militant groups in the West Bank, which some analysts say include hundreds of members, tend to be made up of ill-trained and ill-equipped Palestinians in their teens and 20s, many of whom live in densely populated and impoverished refugee camps.

Refugee camps in the Palestinian territories are longstanding communities, initially set up to temporarily house hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were driven from their homes during the 1948 Arab-Israel war following the establishment of the state of Israel. The camps aren’t tent cities but include more durable housing, albeit with poor infrastructure, and often schools and community centers.

New militant groups have formed in recent years, as the Palestinian-Israeli peace process has stalled, an increasingly right-wing Israeli government has empowered an imposing Israeli settler movement and the Palestinian political leadership has proven ineffective. 

“There are really no viable alternatives that people see to changing the status quo of continued occupation and creeping annexation,” Shikaki said. “In this environment, Israel’s military means are able to achieve little.”

Michael Milshtein, a former head of the Department for Palestinians Affairs in Israeli military intelligence, said that Tulkarem was a “strong center of violence” during the second intifada but that “in the last decade it was relatively quiet.” He said that in the last year or two, however, tensions had been growing there.

—Anat Peled contributed to this article.

Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com and Omar Abdel-Baqui at omar.abdel-baqui@wsj.com

5. Israel-Gaza war live updates: Houthis target tanker in third attack on commercial shipping in three days

Israel-Gaza war live updates: Houthis target tanker in third attack on commercial shipping in three days

The Washington Post · January 19, 2024

Iran-backed Houthi militants attempted to strike a tanker ship in the third such attack on commercial shipping in three days, U.S. Central Command said. The attempt late Thursday local time followed another round of U.S. strikes targeting Houthi anti-ship missiles that the United States determined “were an imminent threat” to commercial vessels and U.S. Navy ships. For months, the Houthis have been attacking ships in the Red Sea in what they say is a protest of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, upending shipping routes and drawing international condemnation.

Here's what to know:

President Biden said Thursday that the U.S. strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen are not working. “Are they stopping the Houthis? No,” he said in response to questions at the White House. “Are they going to continue? Yes.” Shortly after, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the strikes will continue for as long as they need to, “to disrupt and degrade the Houthis’ ability to continue to conduct these attacks.”

Mexico and Chile referred the situation in Gaza to the International Criminal Court for investigation over “the latest escalation of violence, particularly against civilian targets” and the “alleged continued commission of crimes.” Last week, Israel defended itself at the International Court of Justice against South Africa’s allegations it is committing genocide in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday reiterated his rejection of Palestinian statehood in a postwar scenario, in comments that were rebuked by the White House. “We obviously see it differently,” Kirby said, noting that “we’re not going to stop working” toward a two-state solution.

At least 24,620 people have been killed in Gaza and 61,830 wounded since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack.

1/4

End of carousel

Here's what to know

President Biden said Thursday that the U.S. strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen are not working. “Are they stopping the Houthis? No,” he said in response to questions at the White House. “Are they going to continue? Yes.” Shortly after, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the strikes will continue for as long as they need to, “to disrupt and degrade the Houthis’ ability to continue to conduct these attacks.”

Mexico and Chile referred the situation in Gaza to the International Criminal Court for investigation over “the latest escalation of violence, particularly against civilian targets” and the “alleged continued commission of crimes.” Last week, Israel defended itself at the International Court of Justice against South Africa’s allegations it is committing genocide in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday reiterated his rejection of Palestinian statehood in a postwar scenario, in comments that were rebuked by the White House. “We obviously see it differently,” Kirby said, noting that “we’re not going to stop working” toward a two-state solution.

At least 24,620 people have been killed in Gaza and 61,830 wounded since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack.

End of carousel

The Washington Post · January 19, 2024

6. China’s Economy Is in Serious Trouble by Paul Krugman

OPINION

PAUL KRUGMAN

China’s Economy Is in Serious Trouble

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/18/opinion/china-economy-xi.html?

Jan. 18, 2024

Credit...Qilai Shen for The New York Time​s

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By Paul Krugman

Opinion Columnist

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In 2023, the U.S. economy vastly outperformed expectations. A widely predicted recession never happened. Many economists (though not me) argued that getting inflation down would require years of high unemployment; instead, we’ve experienced immaculate disinflation, rapidly falling inflation at no visible cost.

But the story has been very different in the world’s biggest economy (or second biggest — it depends on the measure). Some analysts expected the Chinese economy to boom after it lifted the draconian “zero Covid” measures it had adopted to contain the pandemic. Instead, China has underperformed by just about every economic indicator other than official G.D.P., which supposedly grew by 5.2 percent.

But there’s widespread skepticism about that number. Democratic nations like the United States rarely politicize their economic statistics — although ask me again if Donald Trump returns to office — but authoritarian regimes often do.

And in other ways, the Chinese economy seems to be stumbling. Even the official statistics say that China is experiencing Japan-style deflation and high youth unemployment. It’s not a full-blown crisis, at least not yet, but there’s reason to believe that China is entering an era of stagnation and disappointment.

Why is China’s economy, which only a few years ago seemed headed for world domination, in trouble?

Part of the answer is bad leadership. President Xi Jinping is starting to look like a poor economic manager, whose propensity for arbitrary interventions — which is something autocrats tend to do — has stifled private initiative.

But China would be in trouble even if Xi were a better leader than he is.

It has been clear for a long time that China’s economic model was becoming unsustainable. As Stewart Paterson notes, consumer spending is very low as a percentage of G.D.P., probably for multiple reasons. These include financial repression — paying low interest on savings and making cheap loans to favored borrowers — that holds down household income and diverts it to government-controlled investment, a weak social safety net that causes families to accumulate savings to deal with possible emergencies, and more.

With consumers buying so little, at least relative to the Chinese economy’s productive capacity, how can the nation generate enough demand to keep that capacity in use? The main answer, as Michael Pettis points out, has been to promote extremely high rates of investment, more than 40 percent of G.D.P. The trouble is that it’s hard to invest that much money without running into severely diminishing returns.

True, very high rates of investment may be sustainable if, like China in the early 2000s, you have a rapidly growing work force and high productivity growth as you catch up with Western economies. But China’s working-age population peaked around 2010 and has been declining ever since. While China has shown impressive technological capacity in some areas, its overall productivity also appears to be stagnating.

This, in short, isn’t a nation that can productively invest 40 percent of G.D.P. Something has to give​.

Now, these problems have been fairly obvious for at least a decade. Why are they only becoming acute now? Well, international economists are fond of citing Dornbusch’s Law: “The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.” What happened in China’s case was that the government was able to mask the problem of inadequate consumer spending for a number of years by promoting a gigantic real estate bubble. In fact, China’s real estate sector became insanely large by international standards.

But bubbles eventually burst.

To outside observers, what China must do seems straightforward: end financial repression and allow more of the economy’s income to flow through to households, and strengthen the social safety net so that consumers don’t feel the need to hoard cash. And as it does this it can ramp down its unsustainable investment spending.

But there are powerful players, especially state-owned enterprises, that benefit from financial repression. And when it comes to strengthening the safety net, the leader of this supposedly communist regime sounds a bit like the governor of Mississippi, denouncing “welfarism” that creates “lazy people.”

So how worried should we be about China? In some ways, China’s current economy is reminiscent of Japan after its bubble of the 1980s burst. However, Japan ended up managing its downshifting well. It avoided mass unemployment, it never lost social and political cohesion, and real G.D.P. per working-age adult actually rose 50 percent over the next three decades, not far short of growth in the United States.

My great concern is that China may not respond nearly as well. How cohesive will China be in the face of economic trouble? Will it try to prop up its economy with an export surge that will run headlong into Western efforts to promote green technologies? Scariest of all, will it try to distract from domestic difficulties by engaging in military adventurism?

So let’s not gloat about China’s economic stumble, which may become everyone’s problem.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Paul Krugman has been an Opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a distinguished professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade and economic geography. @PaulKrugman

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 19, 2024, Section A, Page 19 of the New York edition with the headline: China’s Economy Is in Serious Trouble. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

7. Defense chief Austin asked to testify before Congress on hospital secrecy

Defense chief Austin asked to testify before Congress on hospital secrecy

By Adela Suliman and Dan Lamothe

January 19, 2024 at 6:03 a.m. EST

The Washington Post · by Adela Suliman · January 19, 2024

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has been called to testify before Congress to explain why he kept his recent hospitalization a secret, including from the White House.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) sent a letter to Austin on Thursday, saying his “direct testimony” was required to understand the “decisions made to withhold information from the President, Congress, and the American people.”

“Congress must understand what happened and who made decisions to prevent the disclosure of the whereabouts of a cabinet secretary,” Rogers wrote. The hearing is set to take place on Feb. 14.

Austin, 70, was released from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda on Monday, the Pentagon said, after a two-week stay that included a stint in intensive care. His medical crisis was kept secret for four days.

The situation has garnered significant interest and sparked controversy, after it was revealed Austin underwent two hospitalizations and surgery after a prostate cancer diagnosis but had not notified the White House or key Pentagon officials. It also triggered a broader debate over the proper balance between privacy and disclosure for top government officials, and whether they are allowed to keep serious medical problems to themselves.

“This is a time of immense global instability,” Rogers said in the letter. “Maintaining the most ready and lethal force possible requires that everyone in the national security community be able to rely upon the Secretary of Defense’s availability and transparency. Regrettably, you have not exhibited these attributes throughout this most recent string of events.”

In early December, following routine medical screenings, Austin learned that he had prostate cancer. The disease, the second-most common form of cancer for men, had been caught in its early stages and was considered highly treatable, the Pentagon said.

Austin underwent surgery on Dec. 22 to treat the prostate cancer, without informing President Biden and other senior administration officials. On Jan. 1, the secretary was in intense pain and suffering from nausea and severe abdominal, hip, and leg pain when he was transported to Walter Reed by ambulance from his Northern Virginia home, the Pentagon said later, and was readmitted with complications related to the earlier surgery.

According to audio of a 911 call on Jan 1., an aide to Austin requested the ambulance arrive without lights or sirens “to remain a little subtle” when approaching his home.

A handful of officials close to Austin learned about his hospitalization Jan. 2, but the information was withheld from the White House until Jan. 4, and from Congress and the public until Jan. 5.

Pentagon officials have struggled to explain the lack of transparency, including with Biden.

Austin, a retired four-star Army general, is known to be intensely private, which may have influenced how he handled his medical affairs, his colleagues have previously suggested to The Post.

“We fully recognize that there are going to be many questions, in terms of notification timelines,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Defense Department spokesman, said last week. He added that notification to the White House was delayed in part because Kelly Magsamen, Austin’s chief of staff, was also out sick with the flu.

The White House has said Biden retains confidence in Austin’s work as defense secretary but acknowledged frustration with the secrecy.

“It’s not good, it’s certainly not good,” John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, told reporters last week. “Which is why, again, we want to learn from this. We want to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

White House officials have directed a review of how senior government officials delegate authority to others when needed. Austin’s chief of staff, Magsamen, has ordered a 30-day internal review of the matter and the Defense Department’s inspector general has launched an investigation.

Inspector General Robert Storch said his staff would begin its work this month and that while the inquiry will be focused on the Office of the Secretary of Defense, its scope could broaden.

In a statement following his release from the hospital, Austin thanked medical staff and said he would “continue to recuperate and perform my duties from home,” adding that he was “eager to fully recover and return as quickly as possible to the Pentagon,” without giving a specific time frame.

I want to thank the doctors and nursing staff at Walter Reed for their professionalism and superb support during my stay. Now, as I continue to recuperate and perform my duties from home, I’m eager to fully recover and return as quickly as possible to the Pentagon.…

— Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III (@SecDef) January 15, 2024

Missy Ryan, Matt Viser, Mariana Alfaro and Kelsey Ables contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by Adela Suliman · January 19, 2024

8. Japan will attempt to land a spacecraft on the moon precisely

Japan will attempt to land a spacecraft on the moon precisely

An ability to land at a precise location will be critical to plans to set up permanent bases on the lunar surface

By Julia Mio Inuma and Christian Davenport

January 18, 2024 at 8:00 p.m. EST

The Washington Post · by Julia Mio Inuma · January 19, 2024

TOKYO — Japan will attempt to land its high-precision “Moon Sniper” explorer on the lunar surface on Friday, using pioneering “pinpoint landing” technology to steer the robotic explorer to a precise touchdown point.

The landing, if successful, will also be historic for another reason: It will be Japan’s first moon landing, making it the fifth country — and the third this century, after China and India — to chalk up that achievement.

“The goal of this mission is to land where you want to land, instead of landing where you can land,” said Hiroyuki Kamata, a professor at Meiji University in Tokyo who helped develop the vision-based navigation system for SLIM, as the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon is known.

The vehicle, which has no people on board, is part of a mission to unravel the origins of the moon through composition analysis of rocks, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. It would also facilitate the sampling of lunar permafrost, which could help unveil mysteries about water resources on the moon.

The spacecraft is targeting a landing near a small lunar impact crater called Shioli, near the Sea of Nectar, at 10 a.m. Eastern on Friday. It is aiming to land within 327 feet (100 meters) of its target, far more ambitious than the usual landing zone of several kilometers.

JAXA launched the space vehicle in September, and it entered lunar orbit on Dec. 25. On Monday, JAXA confirmed it would start the landing descent on Friday.

“The biggest challenge is the fact that we only have one shot,” Shinichiro Sakai, the SLIM project manager, said last month. “The final test will be during the last 20 minutes of landing. What we have spent 20 years developing will be tested out in just 20 minutes. We must accomplish this.”

The rover uses a vision-based navigation system to achieve a pinpoint landing. During SLIM’s descent, cameras will take images of the craters on the lunar surface. Using a rapid image-matching algorithm onboard, the images are matched to craters on lunar maps to identify the precise location, and the system will adjust course until SLIM reaches its target landing site.

If the landing succeeds, SLIM will have released two probes equipped to photograph the landing scene, allowing crews on the ground to monitor the spacecraft’s status. The probes would also provide an “independent communication system for direct communication with Earth,” according to JAXA.

Data collected through SLIM will also be used for NASA’s Artemis project, the U.S. effort to place astronauts on the surface of the moon and build a sustainable presence there.

“With the advance of technology and data, gone are the days when merely exploring ‘somewhere on the moon’ was desired,” Sakai said. “There is now a growing demand to pinpoint specific targets like craters and rocks on the lunar surface.”

If the project is successful, the technology will make it easier and more economical for future robotic probes to land precisely at their target sites, said Meiji University’s Kamata. “I imagine that this technology will become useful if we are to build some sort of base on the moon in the future.”

Tomokatsu Morota, an associate professor at the University of Tokyo who specializes in lunar and planetary exploration, said that pinpoint landings will be “a great advantage in the future industrialization of water resources,” one of the goals of the current round of lunar probes. Water is thought to exist as ice in permanently shadowed craters and would be an important resource not just to support a human presence, but also in the potential manufacture of rocket fuel.

Several nations have attempted to land on the lunar surface recently, with mixed results. India successfully landed a spacecraft on the moon in August. But an attempt in April by ispace, a Japanese company, failed, as did one in August by Russia.

NASA is also working to send a fleet of uncrewed spacecraft to the lunar surface ahead of astronaut missions as part of its Artemis program. The first of those, launched earlier this month, was unsuccessful when the spacecraft, developed by Astrobotic, a Pittsburgh-based company, started leaking fuel. While it did travel deep into space, the spacecraft did not have enough fuel to accomplish a soft landing and ended up returning to Earth, where it burned up in the atmosphere.

Intuitive Machines, another U.S. company, is set to launch a spacecraft to the moon next month. If it is successful, it would be the first U.S. space mission in more than 50 years to land softly on the moon, as well as the first commercial vehicle to land on the moon.

Later this year, China is planning to land a craft on the far side of the moon in an effort to bring samples back to Earth. That mission would be China’s second landing on the far side of the moon; in 2019, China became the only country to have successfully landed on the moon’s far side. In 2020, a Chinese spacecraft brought back samples from the lunar surface, another sign of China’s growing space abilities.

The Washington Post · by Julia Mio Inuma · January 19, 2024

9. Ukraine is piling pressure on China to help it end the war. But Beijing’s plans for peace are focused on Gaza

Excerpts:

Russia has not been represented in any of the four closed-door international peace talks that have taken place so far, though its participation would be needed for a peace agreement. Of those three, China only attended one hosted by its increasingly close strategic partner, Saudi Arabia.

Beijing views Moscow as a key partner in counterbalancing what it sees as a hostile West, and the two countries have continued to bolster security, diplomatic and economic ties since Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

“As long as Russia doesn’t accept it, whatever happens at the peace conference is irrelevant. China will not support conditions that Russia opposes,” said Sun in Washington. “Any attempt to draw China into such a setting will fail because China also understands the optics of it joining such a session.”

For now, that may see China sit on the sidelines, until it feels there’s a moment for compromise between Kyiv and Moscow – an opening within which it may seek to ramp up its role.

But when it comes to how Beijing may maneuver toward brokering peace in Gaza, China likely doesn’t see itself as yet having captured the opportunity “to present itself as a conflict mediator,” according to Sun. “Therefore, more is on the way.”

Ukraine is piling pressure on China to help it end the war. But Beijing’s plans for peace are focused on Gaza | CNN

CNN · by Simone McCarthy · January 19, 2024

Ukrainian soldiers fighting Russia fire a projectile during intense shelling on the front line in Bakhmut, Ukraine late last month.

Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters/File

Hong Kong CNN —

As Ukraine scrambles to keep international support with Russia’s invasion grinding into a third year, its leader has made clear one country he would like to see join his push for peace: China.

Ratcheting up pressure on Beijing – Moscow’s most powerful political ally – appeared as a key talking point for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other officials this week during a gathering of the global elite in Switzerland’s Davos.

There, Zelensky told reporters he would “very much like China to be involved” in Ukraine’s peace plan. His foreign minister said the country wanted more contact with China at “all levels,” Interfax-Ukraine reported, while Zelensky’s chief of staff left the door open that the wartime leader could even meet China’s top delegate on the gathering’s sidelines.

But Chinese Premier Li Qiang appeared to depart the World Economic Forum earlier this week without meeting Zelensky – and didn’t directly address the conflict in a roughly 25-minute speech that focused heavily on reassuring his audience about China’s faltering economy.

Even as Chinese officials last year ramped up efforts to present the country as a potential peace broker in the war, analysts say it’s unlikely Beijing sees now as the time to leverage its deep and growing Russia ties to ramp up a push for its end – especially on Ukraine’s terms.

“China thinks it is already playing an important role in moving toward peace. It’s just the Chinese version of peace is not what Zelensky wants to see,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Washington-based Stimson Center think tank.

Last year, after Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke to Zelensky for the first time some 14 months after the war began, Beijing dispatched an envoy to both Kyiv and Moscow. It has also released its own proposal for peace, which unlike Ukraine’s demands, calls for a ceasefire without the prior withdrawal of Russian troops illegally occupying Ukrainian territory.

Now, the latest events at Davos spotlight China’s wait-and-see approach when it comes to any further push to bring the war to a close, analysts say, as fighting remains locked in stalemate with neither side giving signs of backing down – and another major conflict, in the Middle East, draws global attention.

“China previously might have wanted to mediate because it didn’t want Russia to lose too badly. But now there is less worry on that front … China has more incentive to observe how battlefield development will evolve, which will form the foundation for any (peace) negotiation,” according to Sun.

“Now that the US is distracted by Gaza and the resources available to Ukraine are more limited, things have shifted in Russia’s favor. There is even less reason for China to ‘advance a fair peace as advocated by the West and Ukraine,’” she said.

Historian: Russia can't beat Ukraine conventionally, so they are doing this instead

02:31 - Source: CNN

China responds to conflict in Gaza

As Li focused on the economy in Davos, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi kept his focus on Gaza earlier this week.

In Cairo as part of the foreign minister’s customary first trip of the year to Africa, Wang issued a joint statement with the Arab League calling for an “immediate and comprehensive ceasefire” in Gaza to end more than three months of war – echoing Beijing’s stance on the conflict since its early days.

Wang also said China called for convening a “larger-scale, more authoritative and more effective international peace conference,” and a specific timetable for implementing a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping addresses leaders during the Third Belt and Road Forum in Beijing last month.

EyePress News/Reuters

Related article China has a sweeping vision to reshape the world — and countries are listening

Though it is unclear how much sway China has in the region to play a strong role backing such an effort, an independent state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel, is consistent with Beijing’s long-standing foreign policy; it was one of the first countries to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state in the late 1980s and has long advocated for a two-state solution.

However, analysts say, the conflict also presents an opportunity for Xi as he maneuvers to position China as an alternative international leader to the United States, in particular for the Global South – and fan perceptions that American policies have disrupted global stability.

“So much (global) frustration and anger has shifted to the conflict in Gaza … and that’s where China scores points for trying to position itself as a diplomatic force for good,” said Alex Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.

“When it comes to the Gaza war, the bulk of Global South countries are strongly, strongly opposed to what Israel is doing … that’s a conflict where portraying yourself as an agent for peace and a negotiated solution yields you much more sympathy (in the Global South) … unlike the Ukrainian war, where most of the countries are sitting on the fence and it’s only the West that’s so united,” he said.

Peace summit

Whether Beijing has an interest in joining a growing number of countries – including those from the Global South – willing to sit down at the table with Ukraine and hear its peace conditions will be tested at an upcoming peace summit, announced Monday.

The meeting, which Switzerland said it would host on an undisclosed date at Zelensky’s request, is expected to draw world leaders to discuss how to end the conflict as it nears entering its third year. Zelensky portrayed it as an event “where all countries that respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity are welcome to attend.”

When asked whether an invitation had been extended to Beijing, China’s Foreign Ministry earlier this week sidestepped a direct reply, saying China’s position “is centered on promoting talks for peace” and supported “any efforts for peace.”

Analysts say it’s unlikely that will translate into high-level attendance at talks where Ukraine’s views, but not Russia’s, would be the starting point.

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping shake hands prior to their meeting in Beijing on December 20, 2023 in this photo from Russian state news agency Sputnik.

Dmitry Astakhov/Pool/AFP/Getty Images

Related article China’s Xi Jinping hails Russia cooperation as record trade beats $200 billion target

Russia has not been represented in any of the four closed-door international peace talks that have taken place so far, though its participation would be needed for a peace agreement. Of those three, China only attended one hosted by its increasingly close strategic partner, Saudi Arabia.

Beijing views Moscow as a key partner in counterbalancing what it sees as a hostile West, and the two countries have continued to bolster security, diplomatic and economic ties since Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

“As long as Russia doesn’t accept it, whatever happens at the peace conference is irrelevant. China will not support conditions that Russia opposes,” said Sun in Washington. “Any attempt to draw China into such a setting will fail because China also understands the optics of it joining such a session.”

For now, that may see China sit on the sidelines, until it feels there’s a moment for compromise between Kyiv and Moscow – an opening within which it may seek to ramp up its role.

But when it comes to how Beijing may maneuver toward brokering peace in Gaza, China likely doesn’t see itself as yet having captured the opportunity “to present itself as a conflict mediator,” according to Sun. “Therefore, more is on the way.”

CNN’s Radina Gigova in London and Svitlana Vlasova in Kyiv contributed reporting.

CNN · by Simone McCarthy · January 19, 2024

10. The Principle of Proportionality in the DoD Law of War Manual

It is important to understand these concepts. And the author makes some interesting recommendations but I defer to our operational and international lawyers and law experts to assess the efficacy.

The Principle of Proportionality in the DoD Law of War Manual

justsecurity.org · by Michael W. Meier · January 18, 2024

January 18, 2024

Editor’s Note: The U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD) Law of War Manual, first published in 2015, sets out the DoD’s authoritative interpretation of international law on matters relating to armed conflict. In recognition of its size, breadth, and the evolving nature of law and conflict, the Manual is also a living document that anticipates needing revisions and updates. In A Living Document, published by Just Security and the Reiss Center on Law and Security, leading scholars and practitioners reflect on how the Manual is keeping pace with its stated purpose and examine specific topics and rules where the Manual may be ripe for clarification or strengthening.

Topline Points:

1. Feasible precautions are broader than an aspect of proportionality. Recommend not tying it to proportionality and instead discuss as a separate legal consideration.
2. Modify Section 5.12.1.3 to read as follows: “The expected loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects is understood to mean those direct or indirect harms reasonably foreseeable resulting from the attack.”
3. Provide more relevant examples of indirect harm as two of the current examples (economic harm due to death of a family member and loss of employment due to destruction of a factory) would clearly not be considered as collateral damage under LOAC.

Introduction

International Humanitarian Law (IHL) is built upon certain core principles: military necessity, distinction, humanity, and proportionality. The principle of proportionality, along with these other core principles, is part of customary international law applicable both in international and non-international armed conflicts. The test for proportionality has been codified in Article 51(5)(b) of Additional Protocol I, which prohibits indiscriminate attacks that: “may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” Additionally, the requirement to implement feasible precautions to mitigate risks to civilians in armed conflict is included with these core principles, which are universally recognized as the baseline framework for regulating armed conflict.

In July, the Department of Defense issued its latest revision to the DoD Law of War Manual. However, other areas remain where the Manual could be revised to better reflect IHL. One such possible revision would be DoD’s interpretation of the principle of proportionality with respect to: (1) the protection of military sick and wounded, military medical and religious personnel, and military medical facilities; and (2) issues of direct and indirect incidental harm. This essay will compare DoD’s interpretation of proportionality with those of the ICRC, through its Commentary to the Geneva Conventions, as well as other States’ positions through practice, reflected in part in military manuals, and offer specific suggestions for revision.

Protection of Military Sick and Wounded, Military Medical and Religious Personnel and Facilities

Section 5.10.1.2 of the DoD Law of War Manual states that proportionality “requires consideration of civilians and civilian objects, but this prohibition generally does not require consideration of military personnel and objects, even if they may not be made the object of attack, such as military medical personnel, the military wounded and sick, and military medical facilities.” The Manual’s rationale for such exclusion is two-fold. First, the treaty provisions in Additional Protocol I that prohibit attacks expected to cause excessive incidental harm do not expressly include any mention of military personnel who are protected from being made the object of attack. Second, the exclusion of military wounded and sick, and protected military personnel and military medical facilities is based on the “general impracticality of prohibiting attacks on this basis during combat operations.” (The Manual notably states the prohibition “generally” does not require consideration of these categories of individuals and objects, suggesting or leaving open the possibility that sometimes the prohibition does so require.)

Although section 5.10.1.2 of the Manual excludes consideration of military personnel and objects under the proportionality analysis, those planning attacks must take feasible precautions “to reduce the risk of harm to military personnel and objects that are protected from being made the object of attack.” The Manual reiterates this requirement in sections 7.3.3.1 (wounded and sick), 7.8.2.1 (medical and religious personnel), and 7.10.1.1 (medical facilities), setting out that although these protected persons or places do not “exempt military objectives from attack due to the risk such [personnel or objects] would be incidentally harmed, feasible precautions must be taken to reduce the risk of harm.” The Manual cites back to 5.10.1.2, which relies on Article 57 of AP I, as support for the obligation to take feasible precautions. One commentary noted that the Manual fails to explain why it appears to reject proportionality but to accept that feasible precautions must be implemented for this category of individuals and objects. This commentary argues that the rationale can be found by looking at the text of Article 57(2)(a), which not only includes protections for civilians and civilian objects, but also for people or places subject to “special protections.” This “special protections” language is not found in Article 51 of AP I.

In 2014, an ICRC legal advisor took the opposite view with respect to persons in that proportionality “must take into account possible deaths or injuries among the medical personnel, including military medical personnel, as well as combatants who are hors de combat.” In 2017, this same legal advisor expanded the argument to include military medical objects as part of the proportionality analysis. This position was adopted by the ICRC, which viewed excluding military medical personnel and objects from the proportionality analysis as “untenable” for three reasons. First, it would be incompatible with the obligations to protect military medical personnel and objects. Second, the definition of what constitutes a military objective led to the conclusion that military medical objects are considered civilian objects under IHL. Finally, the ICRC argues that the proposition that military medical personnel and objects do not enjoy protection under proportionality in attack, while civilian medical personnel and objects do, goes against the fundamental purpose of the Additional Protocols.

This view is reiterated in the 2016 ICRC Commentary to the First Geneva Convention. In the commentary to Article 12, paragraph 1357 provides, in part, “the presence of wounded and sick members of the armed forces in the vicinity of a military objective is to be taken into consideration when carrying out a proportionality assessment prior to an attack.” This view is reiterated in the commentary to Article 19, protection of military units, in paragraph 1797 (“indiscriminate attacks affecting such establishments and units, as well as attacks that may be expected to cause excessive incidental damage to them in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated, may be deemed prohibited”), as well as Article 24, protection of personnel, in paragraph 1987 (“At a minimum, respect requires compliance with the duties of abstention, such as not to attack medical and religious personnel be it directly, indiscriminately, or in violation of the principle of proportionality”).

There is no real consensus with respect to either view. Much of the state practice and even the ICRC’s own Customary International Law Study suggests that proportionality is restricted to civilians and civilian objects. There is some state practice that can be read to include these protected persons and places as part of proportionality. For example, the New Zealand Manual notes that “even where the object of the attack is legitimate, an attack is unlawful if the destruction it is likely to cause to protected persons and objects is too great in proportion to the overall military benefit anticipated.” Similar language can be found in the Australian Manual (“Proportionality requires a commander to weigh the military value arising from the success of the operation against the possible harmful effects to protected persons and objects.”). The position of other states is less clear and leaves room for interpretation.

There is also no scholarly consensus on whether proportionality includes protected members of the armed forces. On one side, in his most recent edition of The Conduct of Hostilities Under the Law of International Armed Conflict, Yoram Dinstein concludes that the requirement of proportionality in collateral damage excludes protected members of the armed forces. On the other, Jann Kleffner, in his 2018 article Military Collaterals and Jus in Bello Proportionality, while acknowledging neither conventional nor customary law extends proportionality to protected persons, writes that the general principles of LOAC extends to a broader notion of proportionality that should also include incidental harm to protected military persons.

Issues of Direct and Indirect Incidental Harm

For a military commander to make a good faith assessment of the proportionality of an attack, he or she must calculate two things: (1) the anticipated military advantage of the attack, and (2) the expected collateral damage. This next section will deal with the latter and what a commander needs to account for when trying to determine “expected” collateral damage.

It is without dispute that incidental civilian deaths and injuries and the damage to civilian objects directly arising from the attack must be considered. However, conflicts arising in urban areas or in close proximity to military objectives and the civilian population leads to situations where attacks can cause what has been termed as “reverberating,” or “indirect” effects. In some cases, these indirect effects may be expected whereas in other cases they may only become apparent well after an attack has occurred. The issue is whether a commander must take these indirect effects into account when calculating the expected collateral damage.

Section 5.12.1.3 of the DoD Law of War Manual provides that “[t]he expected loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects is generally understood to mean such immediate or direct harms foreseeably resulting from the attack. Remote harms that could result from the attack do not need to be considered in applying this prohibition.”

However, subsequent examples in this same section make clear that certain indirect effects are considered in this analysis. For example, attacking and destroying a power plant that would be expected to cause the loss of civilian life or injury to civilians soon after the attack due to the loss of power at a local hospital must be included in the proportionality analysis. This is consistent with Yoram Dinstein’s conclusion that “the only effects that qualify for consideration … are those that are both expected and not too remote.” This view has also been adopted in the UK Manual on the Law of Armed Conflict (“an attack on a military fuel storage depot and there is an expectation that burning fuel would flow into a residential area and cause incidental harm excessive to the anticipated military advantage”). The example in the Manual is also consistent with prior guidance such as the DoD Office of General Counsel’s Assessment of International Legal Issues in Information Operations 1999 (referencing coalition attack on electrical power system in Baghdad in Operation Desert Storm and stating “when an attack is made on an infrastructure that is being used for both military and civilian purposes the commander will not be in a proper position to weigh the proportionality of the expected military advantage against the foreseeable collateral damage unless the commander has made a reasonable effort to discover whether the system is being used for civilian purposes that are essential to public health and safety”); and the 2006 Operational Law Handbook (“[A]ttacks upon ‘dual-use’ infrastructures (i.e., those used for both military and civilian purposes) require that commanders make reasonable efforts to discover foreseeable collateral damage. Commanders must consider whether the system contemplated for attack is essential to public health and safety.”).

Modeling, such as the Collateral Damage Estimation Methodology (CDEM) plays an enormous role in assisting a commander in making a proportionality analysis. The ICRC, certain States, and commentators argue that it is insufficient to take a narrow focus of proportionality and that commanders bear a responsibility to model more than the immediate kinetic effects of an attack and should also consider how those kinetic effects will “reverberate” to produce “knock-on” effects that jeopardize the health and safety of civilians.

This was also a focus of a Chatham House report titled, Proportionality in the Conduct of Hostilities: The Incidental Harm Side of the Assessment. One of its conclusions was that incidental harm was that harm “which was reasonably foreseeable at the time the attack was launched on the basis of information that the attacker had or could reasonably be expected to have in the circumstances.” This approach, which has been adopted by the 2020 Danish Military Manual, looks to a two-part test of foreseeability of the expected harm combined with a causal link between the attack and the collateral damage.

Recommendations

This essay has briefly explored the interpretations regarding the principle of proportionality with respect to the protection of military sick and wounded, military medical and religious personnel, and military medical facilities, as well as issues related to direct and indirect civilian harm. What follows are two recommendations where the Manual could be revised with respect to these two issues.

1. Separate Feasible Precautions from Proportionality. Section 5.10.5 of the Manual notes that it “describes the requirement to take feasible precautions in planning and conducting attacks and the prohibition on attacks expected to cause excessive incidental harm as rules that are based on the principle of proportionality,” while recognizing that others describe it differently.

In my view, the requirement to take feasible precautions is broader than simply a consideration as part of the proportionality analysis and still required even when a particular attack would be proportionate. Further, feasible precautions are required as part of the principle of distinction. The Department of Defense should separate the feasible precautions section from the proportionality section. By encompassing the principle of distinction into feasible precautions, it would help clarify that military protected persons and places – including military wounded and sick, and military medical and religious personnel, and military medical facilities – are not considered military objectives and cannot be made the object of an attack and that they are accordingly protected by the obligation to take feasible precautions to minimize risk to them. Aligning the Manual with the standard understanding of the relationship between feasible precautions and proportionality (that the former is not simply a subset of the latter), could have the added benefit of clarifying the text. For example, Judge Advocates should be made aware that when the Manual, in its current version, refers to an obligation to adopt feasible precautions, it does not necessarily mean proportionality constraints.

2. Include Indirect Harm in Section 5.12.1.3 and Provide Better Examples of Indirect Harm.

a. Section 5.12.1.3, Foreseeable Harms versus Remote Harms, provides that “[t]he expected loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects is generally understood to mean such immediate or direct harms foreseeably resulting from the attack.” (emphasis added). This section, which currently includes only “immediate or direct” harm, should be revised to include both direct and indirect harm that is reasonably foreseeable. My recommendation to revise this language is as follows: The expected loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects is understood to mean those direct or indirect harms reasonably foreseeable as resulting from the attack.

b. The rest of Section 5.12.1.3 includes examples of indirect or remote harm. However, two of those examples of indirect harm (i.e., economic harm due to death of a family member and loss of employment due to destruction of a factory) are not considered collateral damage under LOAC. Accordingly, the Manual should provide more relevant examples in this section to better flesh out what types of indirect harm are reasonably foreseeable from the attack. Examples of such indirect harm would be of more value to the reader.

justsecurity.org · by Michael W. Meier · January 18, 2024

11. Military-technological cooperation across the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific

Excerpts:

All of this needs to be placed in a larger context. China, Russia and North Korea have been cultivating military and technology ties following the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war. With North Korea and Russia under sanctions, these countries have an added incentive to cooperate on technology areas that can enhance mutual “financial, cyber, and kinetic” capabilities. Analysis has also pointed to deepening Sino-Russia military technical cooperation in areas such as conventional submarines, tactical missiles, AI and space systems. Allies and partners across the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic regions need to ensure that this level of military-technological cooperation among revisionist states is kept in check.

The U.S. and its allies need to urgently focus on dragging technologies through to application. Each partner and ally has a responsibility to enhance defense investments in innovation and military-technology, but the familiar pattern of creating new innovation funds and/or agencies may not be enough to compete with revisionist powers. While the important steps to enhance military-technological cooperation – i.e. AUKUS, NATO-Asia Pacific 4, European Union and more – across the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific are essential, more ambition is needed. Owing to the war on Ukraine, many defense-industrial bases are being severely tested to produce basic equipment such as ammunition, but the bigger test of producing high-tech and disruptive systems in significant orders of magnitude is yet to come.

Military-technological cooperation across the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Daniel Fiott · January 19, 2024

The “AUKUS” agreement between Australia, United Kingdom and United States has emerged as the paragon of military-technological cooperation across the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions. There are considerable challenges to implementation. However, it is important that the AUKUS program be a success because it is a daring and novel approach to military cooperation and will enhance allied power in the Indo-Pacific region.

The tripartite arrangement is also about investing in emerging and disruptive technologies. It is an attempt by Australia, the United Kingdom and United States to harness technologies and enhance scientific innovation to counter China’s critical resource base, its scientific prowess and its application of disruptive technologies to warfighting domains such as missile defense and naval forces.

Despite the promise of AUKUS, the program faces critical questions. The three allies already face political challenges to allow for the transfer and sharing of technology between allies. I believe the benefits of and obstacles facing AUKUS could set an example for technological cooperation between the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions. This endeavor is important because deeper technological and industrial cooperation has the benefit of strengthening and interlinking alliance structures in both regions.

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AUKUS and Defense innovation

After the establishment of AUKUS, the Australian government has sought to augment its defense-industrial base in profound ways. AUKUS has been billed as a potential locomotive for Western military-technological innovation. The first pillar of the trilateral pact is focused on Australia’s acquisition of conventional nuclear-powered submarines. The second pillar seeks to develop advanced technologies and capabilities. AUKUS’s obvious goal is to check China’s rise in the Indo-Pacific with the development of autonomous systems, quantum technologies, AI, cyber defense and electronic warfare and hypersonic technologies. AUKUS has stimulated Australia into revitalizing its national defense posture too.

The 2023 National Defence Strategic Review views pillar two of AUKUS, and technology development more generally, as key to maintaining an asymmetric technological advantage in the Indo-Pacific and to check China’s rise with partners. Australia has set aside multiple AUD$ billions until 2023 to invest in defense and innovation. The Australian government has built on its previous Australian Defence Innovation Hub (DIH) with a newly created Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA). Following Australia’s Strategic Review of 2023, the capabilities accelerator will invest AUD$ 3.4 billion over the next decade on priority areas such as hypersonic missiles, directed energy, autonomous systems, quantum technology, information warfare and long-range fires. Taking up and superseding the work of the Defense Innovation Hub and the Next Generation Technologies Fund, the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator comes with a unique mission to ensure that innovative technologies are rapidly tested, developed and procured for the military priorities identified in the 2023 Defence Strategic Review. This includes undersea warfare, enhanced targeting, amphibious, sea denial and control, air and missile defense and logistics capabilities.

Australia is following the approaches taken by its AUKUS partners and allies by placing far greater importance on defense innovation. It is striking that the Australian government’s evolving strategies on emerging and disruptive technologies and innovation share strong similarities with innovation initiatives presently being undertaken by Japan, South Korea and NATO and European Union members and allies.

Japan created the Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency (ATLA) in 2015. The government has since revised its national strategy for technology transfers to help stimulate innovation cooperation with partners and allies. France has created both a Defence Innovation Agency and a Defence Innovation Fund to promote innovation investments worth over €750 million each year up to 2025. NATO now has its own Innovation Fund worth over €660 million per year until about 2038. The Alliance has also put its brand to a Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic that will combine part of the NATO Innovation Fund and venture capital for innovative projects. The European Union is also investing €2 billion under the E.U. Defence Innovation Scheme and it has created its own Defence Innovation Hub.

Sharing is caring?

Australia and its partners have clearly followed similar strategies when enhancing defense innovation and the development of emerging and disruptive technologies. Overall, this has come in the form of additional finances and investment but at the heart of initiatives such as the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator is a desire to bridge the innovation gap between public and private sectors. Specialized agencies and technology accelerators are designed to stimulate cooperation between militaries, defense establishments, researchers, scientists and venture capital investors. Beyond the technology buzzwords and new bodies, however, such bodies have to prove the worth of public investments. Ultimately, the only guide to success is whether emerging and disruptive technologies will make a real difference to the performance, endurance and sustainability of military capabilities. In this sense, more of a focus is needed on “defense” rather than just “innovation”.

Another key aspect of military-technological cooperation is the challenge posed by technology transfers and sharing. Exchanging information between governments on defense innovation and capability programs is notoriously difficult because governments and firms seek to protect their Intellectual Property Rights. In the case of AUKUS there are already fears that “antiquated legal and regulatory settings” could threaten the “realisation of the AUKUS agenda to its fullest potential.” The United States’ extra-territorial regulations and restrictions have been designed to both protect American industrial interests and ensure that no sensitive military technologies and know-how leak to adversaries. Yet, these same legitimate regulatory steps can have a dampening effect on allied cooperation with the United States through fear that technologies (including software and hardware) that include U.S.-made components, technologies and/or software could be subjected to controls.

Key allies and partners across the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions should not expect the United States to revise its export restrictions anytime soon, even if the imperative of sharing technologies between partners and allies on emerging and disruptive technologies is clear. One inadvertent effect of these regulations is that allied and partner nations may seek enhanced innovation efforts on a more bilateral basis. For example, Australia and France have used their bilateral consultations to call for more industrial cooperation in areas such as outer space, as well as closer operational and logistical collaboration on defense. Defense industrial ties between Australia and Germany have also deepened following one of Australia’s largest defense export deals to Germany for over 100 Boxer armed carriers. Spain and Australia also maintain strong defense industrial ties, with Spanish ship-builder Navantia being heavily involved in the construction of Royal Australian Navy surface vessels.

Yet there are also limits to Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific cooperation via NATO or the European Union. For example, the NATO Innovation Fund has just been initiated among several allies, but the fund is not yet officially open to cooperation with the Asia Pacific 4 countries. The same is true of Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic, although companies from the Indo-Pacific that are headquartered in a NATO member nation can apply for support. The European Union’s Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) projects on defense have recently been opened to partners like the United States and United Kingdom. Additionally, the European Defence Agency has administrative arrangements to exchange information on defense technologies with Norway, Switzerland, Serbia, Ukraine, the U.S., the European Space Agency and the Organisation for Joint Armament Cooperation. However, none of these E.U. frameworks include cooperation with states such as Australia, Japan or South Korea.

There is, today, no single cooperative framework where Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific allies and partners can exchange technology or engage in joint defense innovation. Defense innovation cooperation is relatively well developed in the Euro-Atlantic region, but a key challenge will be bridging these efforts to the Indo-Pacific with partners such as the Asia Pacific 4. AUKUS and the Global Combat Air Program are attempts at such a bridging but they can hardly be considered a conclusive response to actions of revisionist powers such as China. If one of the aims is to increase military interoperability between the Indo-Pacific and the Euro-Atlantic regions, then exchange of information and the development of emerging and disruptive technologies will be vital.

The challenge of innovation

Even if the reform of export restrictions that could greatly facilitate technology exchange between the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions is currently off the cards, there is nothing stopping enhanced operational cooperation between militaries across the two regions. The Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator demonstrates the need to develop innovative technologies into military advantage, which is a shared objective of all partners and allies across the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions. In particular, there is a need to avoid investing in innovation for innovation’s sake and to move as rapidly as possible to proof of concept and commercialization. To ensure that defense innovation is paying off, relevant nations will need proof of concept opportunities in the form of joint military exercises and technology demonstrations.

It is already known that individual navies are currently testing technology innovations such as directed-energy weapons, including the American, British, French and German navies. The U.S. Navy, for example, has already tested on land a new directed-energy weapon system in New Mexico to be eventually used to target drones and subsonic cruise missiles at sea. The French Navy already tested such a weapon system onboard an unnamed surface vessel in 2023. In time, many other states including Australia will have advanced directed-energy weapon systems. Accordingly, existing multilateral cooperation exercises at sea such as “La Perouse” or other formats would be an ideal opportunity to test and demonstrate emerging and disruptive technologies such as directed-energy weapons.

In addition, defense innovation cooperation between Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific nations does not necessarily have to take on a research and development dimension. For example, Asia Pacific 4, European Union and NATO countries could continue to boost their cooperation on critical mineral supplies as a basis for securing technology supply chains. More broadly, Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific nations can enhance efforts to enhance the exchange of scientists and researchers. In this sense, any discussion about defense innovation cooperation quickly becomes a reflection about broader economic relations than just the thorny issue of technology transfers and the regulation of Intellectual Property Rights.

All of this needs to be placed in a larger context. China, Russia and North Korea have been cultivating military and technology ties following the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war. With North Korea and Russia under sanctions, these countries have an added incentive to cooperate on technology areas that can enhance mutual “financial, cyber, and kinetic” capabilities. Analysis has also pointed to deepening Sino-Russia military technical cooperation in areas such as conventional submarines, tactical missiles, AI and space systems. Allies and partners across the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic regions need to ensure that this level of military-technological cooperation among revisionist states is kept in check.

The U.S. and its allies need to urgently focus on dragging technologies through to application. Each partner and ally has a responsibility to enhance defense investments in innovation and military-technology, but the familiar pattern of creating new innovation funds and/or agencies may not be enough to compete with revisionist powers. While the important steps to enhance military-technological cooperation – i.e. AUKUS, NATO-Asia Pacific 4, European Union and more – across the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific are essential, more ambition is needed. Owing to the war on Ukraine, many defense-industrial bases are being severely tested to produce basic equipment such as ammunition, but the bigger test of producing high-tech and disruptive systems in significant orders of magnitude is yet to come.

Become a Member

Prof. Dr. Daniel Fiott is head of the defence and statecraft programme at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (CSDS), Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He is also a non-resident fellow at the Madrid-based Elcano Royal Institute for International and Strategic Studies.

This paper was completed with the support of the NATO Science for Peace and Security programme. It is part of a project looking at the future of the Indo-Pacific region and NATO, and the author wishes to thank the participants of a conference organised under the project on 11 May 2023 in Canberra, Australia, which as hosted by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Daniel Fiott · January 19, 2024

12. After Taiwan's election, its new envoy to the US offers assurances to Washington and Beijing

Video at the link:: https://apnews.com/article/taiwan-envoy-yui-china-e088c8e7c9efcdf0114b96eea33bec16?utm

After Taiwan's election, its new envoy to the US offers assurances to Washington and Beijing

BY DIDI TANG

Updated 9:10 PM EST, January 18, 2024

AP · January 19, 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — Taiwan’s top diplomat in Washington has a message for both the island’s Chinese adversaries and its American friends: Don’t worry that Taiwan’s new president-elect will worsen relations with Beijing and possibly draw the U.S. into a conflict.

President-elect Lai Ching-te plans to keep the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, Alexander Tah-Ray Yui told The Associated Press on Thursday in his first interview with an international news organization since he arrived in the U.S. in December.

The Chinese government has called Lai a troublemaker who will push Taiwan toward independence. But Yui said Lai is willing to engage with Beijing, even as the island seeks to strengthen its unofficial ties with Washington for stability in the region.

“We want the status quo. We want the way it is — neither unification, neither independence. The way it is is the way we want to live right now,” said Yui, Taiwan’s de-facto ambassador to the U.S., noting the stance is largely supported at home and will guide the new administration.

Yui spoke to the AP five days after Lai won the presidential election with more than 40% of the vote in a three-way race. Lai will succeed Tsai Ing-wen when he is inaugurated in May.

His victory, which gives the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party an unprecedented third presidential term, was not welcomed by Beijing, which claims Taiwan as its own, to be taken by force if necessary.

Military action in the Taiwan Strait could draw in the United States, which has a security pact with Taiwan to deter any armed invasion from the mainland.

Taiwan’s top diplomat in Washington, Alexander Tah-Ray Yui, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, Jan. 18, 2024 in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

Beijing refused to have any dialogue with Tsai because her party rejects China’s claim of sovereignty over the island, and before the election had suggested to voters that they could be choosing between war and peace.

It remains unclear if Beijing will be willing to engage with Lai, who in the past described himself as a “pragmatic worker of Taiwan’s independence.”

Two days after Lai was elected, China wooed away Nauru, a small Pacific island nation, which has left Taiwan with only 12 countries around the world that recognize its statehood. However, China has not launched massive military exercises around the island, as it has in past times of increased tensions.

Yui said Lai intends to follow the same line as his predecessor “but also to offer an olive branch to mainland China by saying that he’s also willing to engage with mainland China.”

At the same time, Taiwan will work with the U.S. to boost its defense and deepen economic and cultural ties, Yui said, calling relations with Washington “one of the most important aspects in our foreign affairs.”

The United States does not have a formal relationship with Taiwan, but it has stepped up its support in the past several years, angering China, which has urged the U.S. to “exercise extreme prudence in handling Taiwan-related issues.” President Xi Jinping told President Joe Biden that Taiwan is the most sensitive issue in U.S.-China relations.

Shortly after Taiwan’s election, Biden told reporters that his administration does not support Taiwan’s independence.

Scott Kennedy, senior adviser and trustee chair in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, said he expected tensions to remain largely the same under Lai.

“Beijing will continue to develop its military capabilities and push the boundaries of military threats and economic coercion,” he said. “The U.S. will continue to assist Taiwan with its defensive preparedness and push Taiwan to move more assertively on the various elements needed for effective self-defense.”

But Kennedy said Beijing may also open up some channels for the two sides to convey messages and reduce misunderstanding.

Yui said it is incumbent upon both Beijing and Taipei to keep the Taiwan Strait peaceful.

“I have to stress, we’re not the aggressors. We’re not the ones, you know, making waves in the Taiwan Strait, making things nervous and tense,” he said, alluding to Beijing’s increased military activities near the island in the past several years.

Taiwan’s top diplomat in Washington, Alexander Tah-Ray Yui, poses for a photo after an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, Jan. 18, 2024 in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

Yui said Taiwan is determined to safeguard its homeland, noting that the island is increasing its defense budget and has extended the mandatory military service from four months to one year.

He said Beijing’s luring away of Nauru was an attempt to punish the Taiwanese people for choosing the leader they wanted and will only backfire.

“They were just trying to find an appropriate time and excuse to slowly pluck all of our allies,” Yui said. But, as a technological powerhouse and a democracy, Taiwan has “become a common word in the international community” and countries around the world have become more willing to engage with it, he said.

Yui, who met with Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson shortly before Taiwan’s election, said he’s been encouraged by the support from both the Republicans and Democrats.

“If you go to the U.S. Congress, your heart warms up because everywhere you go you meet friends,” he said.

Sen. Ben Cardin, the Democratic chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called Taiwan “a key U.S. partner in the Indo-Pacific and beyond” and said he would be “working closely with the newly elected leadership of Taiwan to deepen our economic, security, and people-to-people ties.”

Yui, who was born to a diplomat’s family, attended high school in Panama and received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Texas A&M University. He previously served as Taiwan’s ambassador to Paraguay and as its vice foreign minister.

Before he came to Washington, Yui briefly served as Taiwan’s representative to the European Union and Belgium. Yui succeeded Hsiao Bi-Khim, who left the post in November to be Lai’s running mate. Hsiao, who is credited with deepening Taiwan-U.S. ties when heading the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States between 2020 and 2023, will be the next vice president.

AP · January 19, 2024

13. Where might the US station its B-21 bombers to deter China?

Maps at the link: https://www.defensenews.com/air/2024/01/18/where-might-the-us-station-its-b-21-bombers-to-deter-china/?utm

Where might the US station its B-21 bombers to deter China?

Defense News · by Chris Martin · January 18, 2024

WASHINGTON — Nations in the Asia-Pacific are growing their missile arsenals, but the development of long-range capabilities may help stabilize the region, according to a report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The London-based think tank released its take on the region’s balance of power, noting the growth in arms could boost deterrence against potential Chinese military offensives.

China has in recent years stepped up military activity around neighboring Taiwan, which Beijing considers a rogue province and has threatened to take back by force. While the United States officially maintains its one-China policy, it also provides arms to the island nation.

“That’s been our policy for as long as I can remember, and it remains our policy,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday. “And again, it’s a policy that ensures to the best of our ability that we have peace, that we have stability, that we don’t have a status quo that’s disrupted in ways that are going to have repercussions for everyone around the world.”

As a means of ensuring regional stability, the report specifically pointed to the U.S. Air Force’s B-21 Raider, a bomber currently in development by Northrop Grumman.

The first Raider, unveiled a little over a year ago, flew to Edwards Air Force Base, California, in November 2023 to undergo flight testing. Initial delivery to the service is expected in the mid-2020s.

The IISS report offered four possible basing locations for the B-21 in the Asia-Pacific — one in Guam and three in Australia — based on its own analysis, information from the U.S. and Australian militaries, and Lockheed Martin.

In addition, a variant of the Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile, dubbed AGM-158D JASSM-XR, with a range of up to about 1,118 miles, is scheduled to begin delivery in February 2027, the report noted.

“Designed to defeat modern air-defence systems and attack fixed targets, the JASSM and its variants can be launched from most USAF-crewed combat aircraft but are particularly potent when launched from long-range bombers,” it stated. “The prospect that the future B-21 Raider very low-observable bomber might also be equipped with variants of the JASSM will also potentially significantly extend the USAF’s ability to project power at long ranges while remaining undetected.”

Here’s the reach these scenarios provide the U.S. Air Force:

This shows the B-21 stationed at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. (International Institute for Strategic Studies)

This shows the B-21 stationed at RAAF Base Darwin in Australia. (International Institute for Strategic Studies)

This shows the B-21 stationed at RAAF Base Townsville in Australia. (International Institute for Strategic Studies)

This shows the B-21 stationed at RAAF Base Amberley in Australia. (International Institute for Strategic Studies)

About Chris Martin

Chris Martin is the managing editor for Defense News. His interests include Sino-U.S. affairs, cybersecurity, foreign policy and his yorkie Willow.

14. Taiwan’s Democracy Draws Envy and Tears for Visiting Chinese

Taiwan’s Democracy Draws Envy and Tears for Visiting Chinese

People with personal ties to China, on a tour to see Taiwan’s election up close, learned of the island’s path to democracy — messy, violent and, ultimately, inspiring.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/19/business/taiwan-election-china.html?utm

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Credit...Xinmei Liu

By Li Yuan

Reporting from Taipei and Tainan, Taiwan

Jan. 19, 2024, 12:01 a.m. ET

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At the Taipei train station, a Chinese human rights activist named Cuicui watched with envy as six young Taiwanese politicians campaigned for the city’s legislative seats. A decade ago, they had been involved in parallel democratic protest movements — she in China, and the politicians on the opposite side of the Taiwan Strait.

“We came of age as activists around the same time. Now they’re running as legislators while my peers and I are in exile,” said Cuicui, who fled China for Southeast Asia last year over security concerns.

Cuicui was one in a group of eight women I followed last week in Taiwan before the Jan. 13 election. Their tour was called “Details of a Democracy” and was put together by Annie Jieping Zhang, a mainland-born journalist who worked in Hong Kong for two decades before moving to Taiwan during the pandemic. Her goal is to help mainland Chinese see Taiwan’s election firsthand.

The women went to election rallies and talked to politicians and voters, as well as homeless people and other disadvantaged groups. They attended a stand-up comedy show by a man from China, now living in Taiwan, whose humor addressed topics that are taboo in his home country.

It was an emotional trip filled with envy, admiration, tears and revelations.

The group made several stops at sites that demonstrated the “White Terror” repression Taiwan went though between 1947 and 1987, when tens of thousands of people were imprisoned and at least 1,000 were executed after being accused of spying for China. They visited a former prison that had jailed political prisoners. For them, it was a history lesson in Taiwan’s journey from authoritarianism to democracy, a path they believe is increasingly unattainable in China.

“Although it may seem like traveling backward in time for people in Taiwan, for us, it’s the present,” said Yamei, a Chinese journalist in her 20s now living outside China.

Image

Supporters at a campaign event in Taipei for Lai Ching-te on Election Day.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

Members of the group flew in from Japan, Southeast Asia and the United States — anywhere but China. Both China and Taiwan have made it harder for Chinese to visit the island as tensions between them have spiked over Beijing’s increasingly assertive claim on the island. They ranged in age from their 20s to their 70s. Some were activists like Cuicui, who left the country recently, while others were professionals and businesspeople who have lived abroad for years and are not necessarily political in their outlook.

Angela Chen, a real estate agent in Portland, Ore., joined the tour to take her mother on a vacation. Ms. Chen is a naturalized U.S. citizen who identifies culturally as Chinese. The trip was eye opening, she said. She was shocked to learn how tragic and fierce Taiwan’s democratization process had been. Her father, like many Chinese parents, told her not to get involved in politics. Now she felt that everyone had to contribute to push a society forward.

Until a decade ago, visiting Taiwan to witness its elections was a popular activity for mainland Chinese who were interested in exploring the possibilities of democratization.

More on China

• Birth Decline: Chinese women have been shunning marriage and babies at such a rapid pace that China’s population in 2023 shrank for the second straight year, accelerating the government’s sense of crisis over the country’s rapidly aging population.
• G.D.P. Data: China’s economy grew 5.2% in 2023 as it rebounded from nearly three years of stringent pandemic control measures. But issues including weak demand, high debt and a steep property contraction at home point to the economy’s weaknesses.
• A Quiet Shake-Up: The purge of several commanders from China’s legislature was the latest sign that Xi Jingping’s offensive to root out alleged corruption and other misconduct in the People’s Liberation Army is gaining momentum.
• Property Crisis: The investment firm Citic Trust had one clear pitch for investors: There is no safer Chinese investment than real estate. The unraveling of its fund shows how wrong they were.

It’s easy to see why. Most Taiwanese speak Mandarin and share a cultural heritage with China as Han Chinese. As mainlanders searched for an alternative Chinese society, they naturally turned to Taiwan for answers.

I traveled to Taiwan in 2012 to report about such a group, which had more than a dozen top Chinese intellectuals, entrepreneurs and investors. At the time, debates about the pros and cons of democracy, republicanism and constitutionalism were common on Chinese social media.

Opinion leaders were asking whether China would ever have a leader like Chiang Ching-kuo, the Taiwanese president who gradually shifted away from the dictatorial rule of his father, Chiang Kai-shek, in the 1980s.

That seems like a lifetime ago. Soon after that, Xi Jinping took over as China’s leader, and he has moved the country in the opposite direction. Civil society has been pushed underground and discussions about democracy forbidden.

Last week’s group visited Taiwan under very different circumstances. Most of them wanted to remain anonymous, agreeing to talk to me only if I identified them by their first name, because merely cheering Taiwan’s democracy is politically sensitive.

At Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park, the former prison, it was easy for the group to picture how people had spent their time in crowded, humid and shabby cells and washed their clothes in toilets.

“Many people thought that Taiwan’s democracy fell from the sky,” Antonio Chiang, a former journalist, dissident and adviser to the departing president, Tsai Ing-wen, told the group over lunch after their visit to the jail site. “It was the result of many people’s efforts,” he said.

Mr. Chiang added, “It will be a very long time before China becomes a democracy.”

Everyone knew that was true. Still, it was deflating for them to hear. But their despair didn’t last long.

Image

Chiang Ching-kuo, the president who gradually shifted Taiwan away from dictatorial rule, at a news conference in Tokyo in 1967.Credit...The Asahi Shimbun, via Getty Images

They heard from the daughter of Cheng Nan-jung, a publisher and pro-democracy activist who set himself on fire to protest the lack of freedom of speech in 1989. At the site of his self-immolation, her comments resonated with the visiting Chinese: “The predicament of a country can only be resolved by the people of that country themselves.”

Then they went to the stand-up show by the comic, who was from Xinjiang, the western Chinese region where more than one million Muslims were sent to re-education centers. Everyone cried. It was both heartbreaking and cathartic for them to hear someone using words, such as “Uyghurs,” “re-education camps” and “lockdowns,” that are considered too sensitive to be discussed at a public venue in China.

“If everyone does what they can, does it well and with a little more courage, our society will become better,” said the comic, who asked not to be named.

For the group, the most empowering part of the tour was to witness the citizens organizing themselves and casting their votes. As the visitors gathered at the island’s presidential palace, Yamei, the journalist, was surprised that its entrance was painted peachy pink.

“It was not an institution surrounded by absolute solemnity or high walls that would intimidate you,” she said. The contrast with Zhongnanhai, the compound for China’s top leaders in Beijing, “was quite striking.”

After watching a documentary about bar hostesses who had organized a union, they learned that the women had drafted legislation to protect their rights. That would be unimaginable for anyone in China.

Learn More About Taiwan

How Taiwan’s Election Fits Into the Island’s Past, and Its Future

Who Is Lai Ching-te, Taiwan’s Next President?

Taiwan Holds an Election That Could Reshape Global Affairs

While homeless people are largely invisible in Chinese cities — because the authorities won’t allow them to be visible — the group learned that many organizations in Taiwan provide homeless people with meals, places to shower and other support.

At election rallies, they saw voters — young and old, and parents with strollers — pack squares and stadiums to listen to candidates make their pitches.

In the days before the election, they had heard from many Taiwanese who had still not decided which of the three presidential candidates they would vote for. Yet, the turnout on Taiwan’s Election Day was 72 percent, higher than the 66 percent that came out in the U.S. presidential election in 2020, the highest turnout in an American vote since 1900.

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The candidate of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, Lai Ching-te, won with 40 percent of the vote — not a satisfying outcome even for some of the party’s supporters. But still the people chose who would be their leader.

At a rally in the southern city of Tainan, amid the sounds of drums, gongs and fireworks, Lin Lizhen, the owner of a jewelry store, told the tour group proudly, “This is democracy.”

Then she said: “I know the mainlanders like freedom, too. They just don’t have the power to fight back.”

Li Yuan writes the New New World column, which focuses on the intersection of technology, business and politics in China and across Asia. More about Li Yuan

15. Challenges And Prospects For Peace In Southeast And East Asia Is Acknowledged As ‘Navigating Complexities’

Challenges And Prospects For Peace In Southeast And East Asia Is Acknowledged As ‘Navigating Complexities’ – OpEd

 January 17, 2024  0 Comments

By Simon Hutagalung

eurasiareview.com · January 17, 2024

The mounting challenges of keeping peace and balance in Southeast and East Asia was mentioned at size for the duration of the ASEAN Ministerial Defense Conference in November 2023, Jakarta, Indonesia. Fundamental troubles like the island disputes between Japan and Russia and China and Japan, the South China Sea, the Code of Conduct, the catastrophe in Myanmar and the Five Point Consensus, the complexities on the Korean Peninsula, the Taiwan Strait, and the evolving ties between North Korea and Russia all contribute to the severity of these challenges. This article delves deeper into the nuances of these troubles and emphasizes the integral significance of an in-depth investigation and concerted efforts to assurance the region’s stability.

The involvement of several states in territorial disputes in the South China Sea is a considerable aspect contributing to heightened global tensions. The meant Code of Conduct will serve as a framework for collaborative choice-making and warfare resolution. However, the success of the surprising warfare is contingent on the choice of methods hooked up through the stunning battle and the willpower of concerned international locations to adhere to the desires of the high-quality war.

The political local weather in Myanmar, and greater particularly the launch of the ASEAN-approved Five Point Consensus, has garnered global attention. The contract specifies the applicable procedures, such as changing the ambassador and coordinating the distribution of property to the victims. The association can solely be carried out with the full dedication of the Myanmar army authorities and the cooperation of the global community.

North Korea’s current launch of a so-called “spy satellite” has similarly escalated tensions on the Korean Peninsula. The workable for militarization and its practicable outcomes on neighboring areas have been noted as reasons for concern. The strengthening of North Korea and Russia’s collaboration provides a layer of complexity to the issue, making it crucial for involved states to take a nuanced and coordinated response.

The instability of the Southeast Asian vicinity and the semiconductor enterprise are each threatened by China’s deployment of troops to Taiwan. Because of the region’s dependency on Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, extra supervision on the global stage is required. The Taiwan Strait should be monitored intently to stop in addition escalation and keep away from bad financial impacts.

The scenario is made greater difficult using the ongoing territorial disputes between China and Japan, as well as the clashes between Japan and Russia over the Kuril Islands. When it comes to heading off manageable naval confrontations and destabilization in the region, diplomatic efforts are extraordinarily required.

To clear up these problematic issues, a complete and coordinated format is essential. Because of the world nature of these problems, worldwide cooperation is essential. Success in this effort requires candid discussion, the adoption of global agreements, and the prioritization of diplomatic solutions. The global neighborhood has the clout to make strides in mitigating these issues’ detrimental results and setting up sustainable peace and security.

To attain these goals, worldwide structures need to amplify their emphasis on dialogue, foster deeper world connections, and motivate a cooperative way of existence if they are to contribute to a future that is greater robust. If the global neighborhood can research its previous successes in working together, it would possibly play a sizable function in preserving the advertising scales balanced. Proactive measures, such as sustained diplomatic engagement and venues for non-stop communication, are vital to pave the way for long-term, sustainable solutions.

The scenario calls for immediate interest and pressing action. Now, international locations should do more than react to emergencies; they should additionally work proactively to prevent the escalation of hostilities. Before this, their sole job used to be to react to emergencies as they arose. Investment in combat prevention methods, merchandising coaching on regional concerns, and encouraging peace initiatives at the grassroots stage can all contribute to a greater secure Southeast and East Asia.

Looking Ahead the Global Neighborhood should hold its vigilance and adaptability as the location works its way through these difficulties. It is integral to behavior steady assessments of the decision-making buildings governing geopolitical dynamics, diplomatic strategies, and armed conflicts. The international locations of Southeast and East Asia may additionally lay the groundwork for everlasting peace through working together, furnished they can foster a spirit of collaboration and mutual understanding.

In short, one wishes for a complete and potential format to deal with the challenges of Southeast and East Asia. Everyone must work collectively closer to a peaceable and affluent future for the area, and doing so will take teamwork, creativity, and foresight. The worldwide neighborhood can feature as a catalyst for profound change, and it is incumbent upon states around the world to take this danger for the larger good.

References:

• Fravel, M. Taylor. “Why China Wants to Control the South China Sea.” International Security, vol. 43, no. 3, 2018, pp. 41-76.
• Thant Myint-U. The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century. W. W. Norton & Company, 2021.
• DePetris, Daniel R. “North Korea and Russia: An Evolving Security Partnership.” Center for the National Interest, 2021.
• Rigger, Shelley. Why Taiwan Matters: Small Island, Global Powerhouse. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011.
• Brown, James D. J. Japan, Russia, and their Territorial Dispute: The Northern Delusion. Routledge, 2016.

eurasiareview.com · January 17, 2024

16. How cyberscams are drawing China into Myanmar’s civil war

We should not be surprised if we study Frank Hoffman's hybrid warfare. But the connection for the three different types of threats seems unique to me.

And we should not forget about the conditions of under governed and ungoverned spaces.

Excerpts:

The conflict in Myanmar also shows no sign of abating, and continues to be a problem from China. During the first week of January, stray shells from fighting in Shan state fell across the border in neighboring Yunnan province, causing several injuries and prompting official protests from Beijing. China mediated a ceasefire between the military government and the Three Brotherhood Alliance in mid-January.

In some ways, this is an old story. Ungoverned spaces and isolated, heavily sanctioned regimes are always fertile ground for illegal activity, from North Korea’s counterfeiting to the Syrian regime’s links to the illegal drug trade. And from Lebanon’s Hezbollah to Colombia’s FARC to Congo’s M23, there can often be a thin line separating politically motivated rebels from profit-motivated criminal syndicates.

Myanmar’s recent experience suggests that as crime moves online, its links to real-world armed conflict aren’t going anywhere.

How cyberscams are drawing China into Myanmar’s civil war

The surprising connection among cybercrime, human trafficking, and a raging guerrilla war.

By Joshua Keating  Jan 18, 2024, 6:00am EST

Vox · by Joshua Keating · January 18, 2024

Last fall, a coalition of rebel groups known as the Three Brotherhood Alliance launched a rapid-fire offensive across Myanmar’s northern Shan state, quickly overrunning more than 100 military outposts and seizing several key towns along the country’s border with China.

This in itself was not unusual. Myanmar’s military government has faced insurgencies from ethnic and political militias for decades, and there’s been a major uptick in rebel activity since the 2021 coup, which brought the country’s current military junta to power, ending a short period of representative government. Over the past few months, the government has been rapidly losing ground to rebel forces in several regions of the country.

But what made “Operation 1027,” named after the date it began, so notable was the declared goals of the rebel groups that carried it out. In addition to their long-term aim of overthrowing the military government, one they share with a variety of other groups throughout the country, the Three Brotherhood Alliance also vowed to “eradicate telecom fraud, scam dens and their patrons nationwide, including in areas along the China-Myanmar border.”

This might sound more like a piece of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s platform than a goal for a rebel group fighting a civil war. But the statement was a testament to both the rapid rise in Southeast Asia of a novel form of criminal enterprise — abducting people across national borders and forcing them to carry out internet scams — and how this practice has drawn China’s government to become ever more enmeshed in the dizzyingly complex and increasingly bloody war in neighboring Myanmar.

The explosion of such scam centers is a reminder that even crimes carried out in the virtual world need physical infrastructure in the real world. And just like more established criminal enterprises that range from drugs to conflict minerals, the perpetrators of cyberscams have taken root in a zone of armed conflict and disputed political control — a reminder that a world that is less secure is also one where such crime can flourish.

The “pig butchering” cyberscam, explained

If you’re reading this, you’re a person with access to the internet, which means that chances are, you’ve already been targeted by one of these scams. Here’s how it works: You get a conversational text or a message on a service like WhatsApp that appears to be a wrong number. The seemingly innocent texts may lead to a conversation that could involve the promise of an exciting love affair or a valuable business opportunity. But these messages are, in fact, written by people forced into service thousands of miles away, and they are actually the first step in a scam that can end with the victim wiring large amounts of money into the scammers’ accounts.

The practice is known as “pig butchering” — as in, the victims are gradually “fattened up” for the slaughter — and it’s a booming industry. In 2022 alone, Americans lost more than $2.6 billion to such pig butchering scams, according to the FBI.

Southeast Asia, particularly Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar, are this illicit industry’s ground zero. The scam centers evolved out of a lucrative casino business along these countries’ borders with China and Thailand, which once catered to junkets of Chinese high-rollers. Many of these casinos operate in “special economic zones,” where lax regulation and tax incentives are meant to attract international investment, but which in practice often become the bases of organized crime. The Southeast Asian gambling business was helped along by the Chinese government’s crackdown on the casino industry in Macau, long considered the Las Vegas of Asia.

The Covid-19 pandemic was a major blow to the casino business, putting an end to lucrative Chinese gambling junkets as Beijing shut the country’s borders. This led organized crime groups to search for new sources of revenue. With people around the world spending far more time online during the pandemic and cryptocurrencies exploding in popularity, cyberscams were an obvious choice.

But finding people to operate the scam centers required another scam altogether. Criminal groups began luring young, tech-savvy workers from around the world with the promise of tech jobs, then holding those workers against their will in tightly controlled compounds. “People really believe that they’re applying for legitimate jobs. The companies seem legitimate, they often go through a process of multiple interviews,” said Rebecca Miller, regional program director for human trafficking at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Bangkok.

This practice — while still awful — is somewhat different from the normal image of human trafficking. “It’s a white-collar crime,” Richard Horsey, senior Myanmar analyst at the International Crisis Group, told Vox. “You need an office block with reliable electricity, a good internet connection, and your workers, even if they’re enslaved, have to be kind of fairly well-educated, technically literate people.”

As a recent UNODC report describes, during the pandemic, “organized crime groups managed to quickly turn casino complexes into large-scale online scam and fraud compounds. Dormitory style bedrooms were constructed in the complexes; scammer training manuals were created; enforcers were hired to control trafficking victims; and the mass recruitment of trafficking victims began.”

Once taken to the scam compounds, victims are often told they have to work off a debt before they can be released. There are frequent reports of beatings and electrocution for those who disobey. According to accounts collected in the report, women are often threatened with sexual violence or being sold into prostitution and some victims have even been threatened with having their organs removed and sold.

There are also a significant number of people working in these compounds willingly, but victims interviewed by the UNODC say the scam operators prefer trafficked workers, who are easier to control. The upshot is that “pig butchering” is a crime with two sets of victims: the scammed and the scammers themselves.

Initially, many of the trafficking victims came from countries like India, Malaysia, and Thailand. This changed once China loosened Covid restrictions at the end of 2022.

“Once the borders opened, young Chinese started streaming across the border to man the scams,” said Priscilla Clapp, a former charge d’affaires at the US embassy in Myanmar now at the US Institute of Peace. Chinese workers were targeted for their language skills — they were better able to scam their countrymen in Mandarin — and poor economic conditions in China coming out of the pandemic made them easier to recruit.

“There’s been a real employment problem for young people in China,” said Clapp. “Well-educated college graduates can’t find work, so they’re the ones who are responding [to the fraudulent ads].”

While total numbers are difficult to come by, the UN has estimated there may be as many as 100,000 people held in scam centers in Cambodia and 120,000 in Myanmar, making it one of the largest coordinated trafficking operations in history.

“I’ve worked in this space for over 20 years and to be honest, we’ve never seen anything like what we’re seeing now in Southeast Asia in terms of the sheer numbers of people,” the UNODC’s Miller told Vox.

How Myanmar became a cyberscam hotspot

While several countries host scam centers, the UN says Myanmar has become an increasingly popular location, thanks to the political chaos in the war-torn country. Many of the scam centers are located in areas along the country’s borders that are not under the direct control of the government, but have been essentially farmed out to Border Guard Forces (BGFs), which rule on the military’s behalf.

The BGFs are often led by former members of the very ethnic rebel groups fighting the government, and many have alleged links to transnational crime. “On paper, these Border Guard Forces are part of the chain of command of the military, and they have some Myanmar military officers sort of seconded to them,” said Crisis Group’s Horsey. “But in practice, they’re a lot more independent than that and they make an awful lot of money.”

Areas of ambiguous and overlapping authority like these are perfect for black-market enterprises. According to the UNODC’s report, the criminal groups in these regions often use the same smuggling routes for human trafficking that they use for drugs and illegally traded wildlife. They also make it all the more difficult for victims to get out, since there’s no government in these regions for authorities to negotiate with.

Horsey says that while the military regime is not formally deriving revenues from the scams, “there’s plenty of money going into people’s back pockets and being distributed around patronage networks. There are lots of ways that everyone is being kept happy.”

With Myanmar’s economy under heavy international sanctions since the coup, illegal activities like cyberscams have only grown.

“Until the situation returns to stability, the scam centers will continue to grow, because the economy needs money,” said Amara Thiha, a conflict researcher in Myanmar with Peace Research Institute Oslo.

China steps in

China has often turned a blind eye to the growing gambling centers on its borders, some of which even pitched themselves as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, a massive global program of Chinese infrastructure investments. China — which is Myanmar’s largest trading partner — also has longstanding political ties and economic interests in Myanmar. It did not join Western countries in sanctioning the junta after the 2021 coup, which Beijing euphemistically described as a “major cabinet reshuffle” and has continued selling the government weapons. “China’s main goal is just to have a stable Myanmar state,” said Thiha.

But as the war rages, the junta has been increasingly unable to provide that stability. Beijing is clearly losing patience with the chaos on its borders and in particular with the scam centers targeting Chinese citizens as both scam victims and trafficking victims. It has repeatedly urged the Myanmar government to do more to crack down on the centers, albeit with little result.

So last September China began cracking down on its own, issuing arrest warrants for government-linked militia officials in Myanmar’s northeastern Wa state, on the Chinese border, accusing them of being “kingpins” in the scams. That prompted a crackdown that resulted in thousands of people being returned to China from scam compounds in the state. The government also arrested 11 officials with ties to pro-government militias in Kokang state after luring them across the border to a folk festival in early October.

China also launched a PR campaign last fall with what appeared to be the coordinated release of several hit movies about the dangers of southeast Asian scam centers. The most popular of these, No More Bets, tells the story of a computer programmer and model who are lured abroad by a job offer and forced into scamming through imprisonment and torture. The film, which made $500 million at the Chinese box office, does not name the Southeast Asian country where it takes place, but its release prompted diplomatic protests from both Cambodia and Myanmar, suggesting both thought it could plausibly be about them.

The situation further deteriorated on October 20 with a reported massacre at a scam center in Shan state. While details are still scant, local media and an independent expert quoted by Voice of America suggest 60 to 100 people, many of them Chinese, may have been killed by the local Border Guard Force in an escape attempt.

A week later, the Three Brotherhood Alliance launched its campaign to eradicate the scam centers. China’s exact role in the rebel group’s Operation 1027 is a bit murky. One of the main groups in the alliance, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, is composed of ethnic Chinese fighters in Myanmar and reportedly has links to Chinese security services. While it’s unlikely they were acting as direct proxies, Scot Marciel, a former US ambassador to Myanmar, told Reuters “the Chinese weren’t troubled that they did it.” At the very least, the alliance’s outspoken anti-scam message was a clear bid for Chinese support.

Initially pro-junta media outlets accused China of backing the rebels and the regime-backed nationals held protests at the Chinese embassy in Yangon. But, junta leader Min Aung Hlaing also belatedly agreed to Chinese demands for a specific timeline for cracking down on the scam centers.

All this has led to suggestions that China is now playing both sides in Myanmar’s civil war — or at least hedging its bets.

The scams are just starting

Operation 1027 was certainly a blow to the scam centers in Shan state. Three weeks after the operation began, some 7,000 people have escaped to China. But USIP’s Clapp is skeptical it will deal a long-term blow to this illicit industry.

“The people running them have moved south and they’ve set up new compounds in Karen state along the Thai border,” she said. “They’ve probably also moved into Cambodia and Laos, because they already had a foothold in those places.”

The practices of the scammers seem set to change as well. Scammers may increasingly rely on artificial intelligence tools and translation tools to communicate with victims. The UNODC warns this doesn’t necessarily mean trafficked workers won’t still be used, just that their profile may change, with IT skills taking precedence over language skills. According to the agency’s report, while most identified trafficking victims in the early days came from Southeast and East Asian countries, recently more victims have been identified from Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, suggesting a widening scope of targets.

UNODC’s Miller says the complexity of the crime makes it a particularly vexing problem for law enforcement. “We’re really talking about a form of transnational crime that involves fraud, cybercrime, human trafficking, money laundering, corruption,” she said. “If we don’t address all of these facets, the criminal groups are just going to continue to flourish.”

The conflict in Myanmar also shows no sign of abating, and continues to be a problem from China. During the first week of January, stray shells from fighting in Shan state fell across the border in neighboring Yunnan province, causing several injuries and prompting official protests from Beijing. China mediated a ceasefire between the military government and the Three Brotherhood Alliance in mid-January.

In some ways, this is an old story. Ungoverned spaces and isolated, heavily sanctioned regimes are always fertile ground for illegal activity, from North Korea’s counterfeiting to the Syrian regime’s links to the illegal drug trade. And from Lebanon’s Hezbollah to Colombia’s FARC to Congo’s M23, there can often be a thin line separating politically motivated rebels from profit-motivated criminal syndicates.

Myanmar’s recent experience suggests that as crime moves online, its links to real-world armed conflict aren’t going anywhere.

Vox · by Joshua Keating · January 18, 2024

17. West Must Be Prepared For War With Russia, NATO Official Warns Ahead Of Major Military Drills

West Must Be Prepared For War With Russia, NATO Official Warns Ahead Of Major Military Drills

https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-west-war-russia-nato-admiral-bauer/32783552.html

rferl.org · January 19, 2024

NATO military committee chief Rob Bauer (file photo)

NATO has warned that the West should step up preparations for the unexpected,including a war with Russia, as Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine is nearing the two-year mark amid worries over possible political fatigue among some of Kyiv's Western allies.

"We have to realize it's not a given that we are in peace. And that's why we [NATO forces] are preparing for a conflict with Russia," Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, the NATO military committee chief, said in Brussels ahead of the start of the alliance's largest exercise since the end of the Cold War.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

The alliance needs to be on high alert for war and "expect the unexpected," Bauer said, adding, “In order to be fully effective, also in the future, we need a warfighting transformation of NATO.”

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius also warned that the war in Ukraine could expand to neighboring countries.

"We hear threats from the Kremlin almost every day -- most recently again against our friends in the Baltic states," Pistorius told the Tagesspiegel newspaper on January 19.

To step up its preparedness, NATO will launch the Steadfast Defender 2024 exercise next month, which will run through May and will involve some 90,000 troops who will rehearse the alliance's execution of its regional plans.

The exercise “will show that NATO can conduct and sustain complex multi-domain operations over several months, across thousands of kilometers, from the High North to Central and Eastern Europe, and in any condition,” the 31-nation organization said in a statement.

With the front line in eastern Ukraine largely unchanged for months, Russia has kept striking Ukraine's cities and towns with drones and cruise missiles, while Kyiv has been targeting economic and military objectives deeper inside Russia.

On January 19, a Ukrainian drone reportedly attacked an oil depot in Klintsy, in Russia's Bryansk region, sparking a fire at oil storage tanks before being shot down by Russian air defense.

"An aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicle was suppressed by Russian electronic warfare systems," regional governor Aleksandr Bogomaz said on Telegram.

"During the destruction of the air target, ammunition was dropped on the Klintsy oil depot," Bogomaz wrote, adding that the fire was being put out by firefighters. He said there were no human casualties.

Social media footage purportedly showed a fire burning alongside what appeared to be storage tanks.

The attack on Klintsy came a day after the Russian Defense Ministry said its air defenses shot down a Ukrainian drone that had attempted to target a Russian Baltic Sea oil terminal in St. Petersburg.

The drone wreckage fell on the premises of the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal, according to Russian officials.

St. Petersburg is Russia’s second-largest city, with some 5.6 million inhabitants and is located at 900 kilometers north of the Ukrainian border.

With reporting by AP and Reuters

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18. Recent GPS Failures in Poland and Baltic States Blamed on Russian Electronic Warfare Trials

Electronic warfare. Space warfare.

Recent GPS Failures in Poland and Baltic States Blamed on Russian Electronic Warfare Trials

An Institute for the Study of War report suggests that recent, significant disruptions to GPS systems in Poland and the Baltic region were caused by Russian electronic warfare testing.

by Kyiv Post | January 19, 2024, 1:45 pm | Comments (2)

kyivpost.com · January 19, 2024

An Institute for the Study of War report suggests that recent, significant disruptions to GPS systems in Poland and the Baltic region were caused by Russian electronic warfare testing.

by Kyiv Post | January 19, 2024, 1:45 pm |

Russia’s Borisoglebsk-2 multi-functional EW system on a recent exercise Photo: Russian Ministry of Defense

On Jan. 16 and 17, unprecedented levels of GPS interference were observed in northern and central Poland. Similar levels of interference had been recorded on Poland’s Baltic Sea coast, as well as northwestern and central Poland in late December.

Polish news outlet Radio Zet suggested that the outages could have been caused either by NATO exercises in the area or tests of Russian electronic warfare (EW) systems emanating from the Kaliningrad region.

The press speculation seemed to be confirmed on Thursday by an Institute for the Study of War (ISW) report which said that the Swedish Military Intelligence and Security Service (MUST) had begun investigations into the disturbances. A Swedish spokesman Lt. Col. Joakim Paasikivi said there was evidence that Russia has previously interfered with GPS signals in northern Europe during Russian maneuvers in Murmansk Oblast and during NATO exercises

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Russian media had reported that EW units of the Russian Baltic Fleet were training on the multi-functional Borisoglebsk-2 EW system in the Russian Kaliningrad exclave since mid-December. The suggestion that Russia has positioned EW capabilities in the Kaliningrad exclave, which can significantly interfere with navigational systems in Poland and the Baltic region, is cause for concern.

The online gpsjam.org, which monitors civilian GPS interference globally and is updated daily, has published an online interference map for Poland on Jan. 16. It shows the extent of GPS problems across much of the country, with the highest level near and around Kaliningrad.

Other Topics of Interest

Radio Transcript: Two Russian Su-34 Pilots Targeted by Ukrainian Missiles Get Lucky

“The missile went by me”: Two Su-34s are surprised when they are targeted by a Ukrainian air defense missile while flying over the Azov Sea. The unidentified missile apparently missed its target.

Screenshot of gpsjam.org map of GPS interference in Poland on Jan. 16, 2024

According to a Jan. 18 Newsweek report, Jukka Savolainen, a representative of Finland’s Hybrid Competence Center, said that GPS jamming was detected in eastern and southeastern areas of NATO’s newest member earlier in January, which they believe may have been “intentionally caused or a by-product” of Russian military activities.

Recent events in Ukraine indicate that the EW war between Russia and Ukraine was also becoming more intense.

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Vadym Skibitsky, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR), said on Thursday that Russia had modified its Kh-101 cruise missiles to provide increased counter-EW protection.

Earlier, Ukrainian Air Force Spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat noted that Ukraine had used EW combined with an analysis of Russian flight patterns to neutralize more than 20 enemy missiles, including three Kinzhal hypervelocity weapons, during its air defense against upwards of 40 missiles launched against Ukraine on Jan. 13.

kyivpost.com · January 19, 2024

19.  Gaza’s Underground: Hamas’s Entire Politico-Military Strategy Rests on Its Tunnels

Excerpts:

There are larger military tunnel complexes in the world. China is believed to have three thousand miles of tunnels and bunkers capable of withstanding nuclear attacks in a network that has been called the “Underground Great Wall.” Some estimates show North Korea has over five thousand tunnels and infrastructure that includes multiple underground air bases with runways, radar sites, and submarine ports inside mountains.

But more importantly than the scale of the tunnels in Gaza, the Israel-Hamas war is the first war in which a combatant has made its vast underground network a defining centerpiece of its overall political-military strategy.

...

The tactical challenges Hamas tunnels present to Israel are thereby compounded by strategic challenges. To deal with tunnels at the tactical level, Israel has demonstrated some of the world’s most advanced units, methods, and capabilities to find, exploit, and destroy tunnels. From specialized engineer capabilities and canine units to the use of robots, flooding to clear tunnels, and both aerial-delivered and ground-emplaced explosives, to include liquid explosives, to destroy them. Arguably, no military in the world is as well prepared for subterranean tactical challenges as the IDF. But the strategic challenge is entirely different. To destroy many of the deep-buried tunnels, the IDF has required bunker-busting bombs, which Israel is criticized for using. And most importantly it has required time to find and destroy the tunnels in a conflict in which Hamas’s strategy is aimed at limiting the time available to Israel to conduct its campaign.

Hamas’s strategy, then, is founded on tunnels and time. This war, more so than any other, is about the underground and not the surface. It is time based rather than terrain or enemy based. Hamas is in the tunnels. Its leaders and weapons are in the tunnels. The Israeli hostages are in the tunnels. And Hamas’s strategy is founded on its conviction that, for Israel, the critical resource of time will run out in the tunnels.

Gaza’s Underground: Hamas’s Entire Politico-Military Strategy Rests on Its Tunnels - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by John Spencer · January 18, 2024

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The use of tunnels in wars is not new. Seeking advantages by using either natural or man-made spaces underground is as ancient as warfare itself—from stories of tunnels being used to win massive battles in the bible to underground spaces becoming key factors to urban battles, like Mariupol and Bakhmut, in the ongoing war in Ukraine. Modern nations including the United States, China, and North Korea invest billions in deep-buried military bunkers and tunnel complexes. But what Israel has faced in Gaza represents a unique first in war—namely, a case in which tunnels form one of two pillars, along with time, of a combatant’s political-military strategy.

Before the Israel-Hamas war, both the presence of Hamas tunnel networks and their growth over the years were very well known. The network was referred to as Gaza’s “Metro” or “lower Gaza.” The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and scholars estimated before the war that there were three hundred miles of tunnels ranging from fifteen feet to over two hundred feet below the surface. The estimates were wrong.

After three months of close combat and discovering over 1,500 tunnel shafts and underground passages, the IDF has learned enough to require the estimates to be revised. Israeli forces have unearthed massive invasion tunnels two and a half miles long, underground manufacturing plants, luxury tunnels with painted walls, tile floors, ceiling fans, and air conditioning, and a complex, layered, labyrinth underneath all areas of Gaza. The new estimates say the network may include between 350 and 450 miles of tunnels, with close to 5,700 separate shafts descending into hell.

New estimates also indicate the construction of this subterranean network could have cost Hamas as much as a billion dollars. The group has poured resources over fifteen years not just into constructing tunnel passages, but for blast doors, workshops, sleeping quarters, toilets, kitchens, and all the ventilation, electricity, and phone lines to support what amount to underground cities. As much as 6,000 tons of concrete and 1,800 tons of metals have been used in this subterranean construction.

The sheer size of Hamas’s underground networks may, once fully discovered, be beyond anything a modern military has ever faced. One of the last conflicts that involved a large amount of tunnel complexes was the Vietnam War. American forces and others faced some tunnel complexes that ranged up to forty miles in length and one of the most concentrated places of tunnels, near Saigon at Cu Chi, contained 130 miles of passageways.

There are larger military tunnel complexes in the world. China is believed to have three thousand miles of tunnels and bunkers capable of withstanding nuclear attacks in a network that has been called the “Underground Great Wall.” Some estimates show North Korea has over five thousand tunnels and infrastructure that includes multiple underground air bases with runways, radar sites, and submarine ports inside mountains.

But more importantly than the scale of the tunnels in Gaza, the Israel-Hamas war is the first war in which a combatant has made its vast underground network a defining centerpiece of its overall political-military strategy.

In the past, and even in most cases today, military tunnels and bunkers have been built specifically to gain a military advantage. They are used for smuggling, kidnapping, and invading or defending territory. Underground spaces enable militaries to conserve capabilities by avoiding detection and strike, to hold terrain by using the tunnels for mobile defense tactics, or even offensively to use guerrilla tactics to attrit the attacking force.

For the first time in the history of tunnel warfare, however, Hamas has built a tunnel network to gain not just a military advantage, but a political advantage, as well. Its underground world serves all of the military functions described above, but also an entirely different one. Hamas weaved its vast tunnel networks into the society on the surface. Destroying the tunnels is virtually impossible without adversely impacting the population living in Gaza. Consequently, they put the modern laws of war at the center of the conflict’s conduct. These laws restrict the use of military force and methods or tactics that a military can use against protected populations and sites such as hospitals, churches, schools, and United Nations facilities.

Almost all of Hamas’s tunnels are built into civilian and protected sites in densely populated urban areas. Much of the infrastructure providing access to the tunnels is in protected sites. This complicates discriminating between military targets and civilian locations—if not rendering it entirely impossible—because Hamas does not have military sites separate from civilian sites.

Hamas’s strategy is also not to hold terrain or defeat an attacking force. Its strategy is about time. It is about creating time for international pressure on Israel to stop its military operation to mount.

Hamas is globally known for using human shields, which is the practice of using civilians to restrict the attacker in a military operation. The group wants as many civilians as possible to be harmed by Israeli military action—as one of its officials put it, “We are proud to sacrifice martyrs.” It wants the world’s attention on the question of whether the IDF campaign is violating the laws of war in attacking Hamas tunnels that are tightly connected to civilian and protected sites. It wants to buy as much time as is needed to cause the international community to stop Israel. Its entire strategy is built on tunnels.

The tactical challenges Hamas tunnels present to Israel are thereby compounded by strategic challenges. To deal with tunnels at the tactical level, Israel has demonstrated some of the world’s most advanced units, methods, and capabilities to find, exploit, and destroy tunnels. From specialized engineer capabilities and canine units to the use of robots, flooding to clear tunnels, and both aerial-delivered and ground-emplaced explosives, to include liquid explosives, to destroy them. Arguably, no military in the world is as well prepared for subterranean tactical challenges as the IDF. But the strategic challenge is entirely different. To destroy many of the deep-buried tunnels, the IDF has required bunker-busting bombs, which Israel is criticized for using. And most importantly it has required time to find and destroy the tunnels in a conflict in which Hamas’s strategy is aimed at limiting the time available to Israel to conduct its campaign.

Hamas’s strategy, then, is founded on tunnels and time. This war, more so than any other, is about the underground and not the surface. It is time based rather than terrain or enemy based. Hamas is in the tunnels. Its leaders and weapons are in the tunnels. The Israeli hostages are in the tunnels. And Hamas’s strategy is founded on its conviction that, for Israel, the critical resource of time will run out in the tunnels.

John Spencer is chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, codirector of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project, and host of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast. He is also a founding member of the International Working Group on Subterranean Warfare. He served twenty-five years as an infantry soldier, which included two combat tours in Iraq. He is the author of the book Connected Soldiers: Life, Leadership, and Social Connection in Modern War and coauthor of Understanding Urban Warfare.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Israel Defense Forces (adapted by MWI)

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by John Spencer · January 18, 2024

20. Peace Between Israelis and Palestinians Remains Possible

Excerpts:

Even if a solution to the conflict is currently unavailable, aimlessly kicking the can down the road is not a reasonable strategy. That approach was not conflict management; it was a strategy that allowed the conflict to manage both sides. Effective, solution-oriented conflict management can look very different. It would set a clear horizon of political independence for both parties—something akin to a two-state solution—toward which all should work, and produce a genuine effort to steer things toward less violence and fewer grievances in the future. It would be extremely difficult, yet far easier and less bloody than any of the alternatives.

Solution-oriented conflict management would take very seriously Israelis’ fears about security, exacerbated on October 7, while taking a hard stance toward Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank that fuels Palestinian fears. The goal of this approach would be to gradually reunite Gaza and the West Bank under a constructive PA that had real civilian authority, including enhanced territorial contiguity of Area B without additional ability to threaten Israel.

For years, negotiators, including Palestinians, have discussed a demilitarized Palestinian state as a component of a two-state solution. It is time to take demilitarization more seriously, even as all sides work seriously to revive the prospect of Palestinian independence.

None of these steps would produce lofty visions of enduring peace. In fact, the United States should be wary of promising to achieve ambitious solutions any time soon, when so few people believe they are available. Yet grandiose notions of peace should not be the enemy of improvement, which is so direly needed at present. The United States is naturally, and perhaps justifiably, weary of managing this conflict. It also has genuinely more important issues and regions to contemplate. But if 2023 is any indication, it would be far better for pragmatic U.S. policymakers to use American power to shift the course of events in the Holy Land than to hand the situation over to extremists and to the bloody dynamics they encourage.

Peace Between Israelis and Palestinians Remains Possible

But to Get There, Both Sides—and America—Need to Be Realistic About What’s Achievable Now

By Natan Sachs

January 19, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Natan Sachs · January 19, 2024

Hamas’s horrific attack on October 7 and the devastating war that followed confirmed the calamitous failure of Hamas’s strategy of “resistance” through the slaughter of Israeli civilians, which has brought not liberation to Palestine but ruination to the Gaza Strip. But the attack has also exposed the failure of Israel’s long-pursued strategy of conflict containment with the Palestinians since the failure of the peace process in the early 2000s. The October 7 attack and today’s war have also laid bare the faulty, reckless logic of one-state proposals that wish away the extremism that feeds the conflict and the existential fear that animates it. Yet these events have also made a two-state solution any time soon even less likely than it was before October 7, with Israelis terrified of any Palestinian sovereignty and the potential repeat of that day’s massacre and Palestinians far less ready for historic compromise with Israel after its devastation of the Gaza Strip.

Seemingly out of solutions, the Biden administration and Israelis and Palestinians themselves must and can find a path toward a less terrible future. They must not revert to the same conflict-containment strategies that set the stage for October 7, nor to reckless notions now in vogue in the West of a one-state solution—essentially regime change in so-called Palestine/Israel. Instead, all sides must be clear about both the strategic objective and, no less important, the long path toward it. They must reaffirm a political horizon, distant though it likely is, of Israeli and Palestinian independence—even if it does not look exactly like the two-state solution of old—coupled with a robust policy for managing the long interim before conflict resolution might be possible. They must be clear that the choice is not between full peace and reconciliation today, which is not available, and a return to a bloody slide away from it, which would only bring further ruin.

Instead, until conflict resolution is possible, the best chance lies with a vigorous push toward dramatically more independence for Palestinians in civilian affairs, while addressing the sources of fear on both sides. This approach would take seriously deepened Israeli security concerns after October 7 and place a limit on what security authority might be transferred to Palestinian control at present. And it would require the United States to use its leverage with Israel to contain violence against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and the expansion of settlement activity, both sources of Palestinian insecurity. Not least, it would require a massive effort in Gaza, with the United States using its influence with Israel, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, and the Gulf states to start to rebuild and reconstitute a future for Gaza governed by secular Palestinian actors.

The current Israeli and Palestinian leaders are either hostile to or incapable of pursuing such strategies seriously. On January 18, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly said he rebuffed a U.S. push for a Palestinian state once the conflict in Gaza comes to an end. But that should not stop the United States or other interested parties in pushing for what is in all the parties’ interests. Although this conflict may not be resolved for the time being, the United States can still help transform reality on the ground so that Israelis and Palestinians move toward a real solution, rather than away from it.

PARADIGM FAILURE

Even as the horrific attack of October 7 in southern Israel was unfolding, shocked Israelis were trying to make sense of the intelligence failure that permitted the surprise invasion by thousands of Hamas terrorists. They turned immediately to the memory of October 6, 1973—50 years and one day earlier—when Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel, breaking its defensive lines in the Sinai and the Golan Heights. The 1973 surprise attack is widely attributed to Israeli analysts becoming prisoners of their own conceptual framework—a vaunted Conceptzia, in Hebrew—that made them evaluate new and potentially contradictory evidence about Egyptian and Syrian intentions and capabilities as merely confirming their existing incorrect assumptions.

In 2023, Israel suffered again from a similar form of confirmation bias. Israeli leaders and intelligence analysts were convinced that Hamas was focused on improving life in Gaza and strengthening its political position in Palestinian society. This thinking was buttressed by what Israel believed was an effective carrot-and-stick approach: Hamas was deterred, Israeli officials assessed, and it was increasingly incentivized to avoid conflict by the gradual loosening of the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza. Evidence to the contrary was either reinterpreted or discarded in the face of this preconceived worldview.

Yet the October 7 massacre represents not only an operational failure for Israel but a strategic one, as well. For years, Israel has approached the Palestinian issue, and much else, with an “anti-solutionist” strategy, as I termed it in Foreign Affairs in 2015. Israelis had come to believe that there were no fundamental solutions to the conflict with the Palestinians, and it was thus better to build walls, invest in one’s own future, and learn to live with a low level of chronic violence. In a supposedly conservative manner, Israelis eschewed any grand designs to reorganize reality. Many came to believe that the “solutionism” that animated the peace process produced only the exceedingly violent second intifada, which began in 2000. And that the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 led only to the rise of Hamas there and the decade-and-a-half bloody standoff with the terrorist group.

That is why Netanyahu and many Israelis opted instead for conflict containment: the strategy of kicking the can down the road. Under Netanyahu, Israel gave up on toppling the Hamas regime in Gaza and instead sought a modus vivendi with the group. Israel mixed deterrence (occasionally “mowing the grass” with strikes on Hamas capabilities when provoked) with a willingness to broadly accommodate Hamas’s governing of its Gaza statelet, mere miles from Israeli civilian homes. Israel was not searching for peace—which Hamas would never accept anyway—but a standoff that Israel would live with.

October 7 has exposed the danger of anti-solutionism.

This approach also reinforced the political and physical divide among Palestinians that had kept the West Bank–based Palestinian Authority out of Gaza. Although the Palestinians were the chief authors of their own political dysfunction, this division among Palestinians fit Netanyahu’s interest in having a weakened PA. To be sure, if he or any other Israeli leader could have made Hamas disappear with the snap of a finger, they would have: Hamas has murdered Israeli civilians for decades and has regularly launched thousands of rockets on Israeli towns since 2001. Yet its independence from the PA furthered Netanyahu’s aims, as he told his political allies explicitly in 2019: “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy—to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” If Hamas could not be eradicated easily, better to find a way to live with the group and even take advantage of it, he reasoned.

If this had been a genuinely conservative approach, it would not have been absurd. Avoiding risk can be wise in volatile times, and deferring tough choices may be smart if time is on one’s side. And during the decade leading up to October 2023, the Israeli strategy appeared to bear fruit. As Arab governments grew weary of waiting for an elusive solution to the Palestinian issue and became eager to pursue their own national interests, normalization between several Arab states and Israel became a welcome reality. As they pursued these deals, both sides bypassed the Palestinian issue. The Abraham Accords, which were the result of this process, seemed like proof of the success of Netanyahu’s approach. It was what the right wing in Israel had long promised: “peace for peace” instead of “land for peace.”

Israel’s approach was not truly conservative, however. Instead of genuinely adopting a cautious holding pattern that would accord it strategic flexibility in the future and arrest damaging trends in the near term, Israel was merely foreclosing its future options—and those of the Palestinians—through a creeping annexation of the West Bank and the erosion of the PA’s authority. Netanyahu was presiding over a dramatically worsening reality on the ground, even if the diplomatic gains of normalization were significant.

Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, rather than acclimating to the reality of Israel’s existence and superior power, Hamas dug in and armed itself, preparing for an opportunity to attack, even while a generation of Gazans grew up in an impossible reality. As Hamas pursued intermittent war with its more powerful neighbor, Gazans bore much of the brunt. They faced an Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza aimed at containing Hamas but causing enormous harm to its subjects, as well. Hamas itself was the key agent in creating those conditions, but Israel’s strategy contributed to them. Hamas was growing stronger while the PA in the West Bank withered away under the weight of its own ineptitude and corruption.

Time, in other words, was on no one’s side. Rather than anyone managing the conflict, the conflict was managing Israelis and Palestinians alike.

DRIVEN BY FEAR

October 7 has exposed the danger of anti-solutionism. But in the eyes of Israelis it has also discredited most proposed solutions to the conflict. The trauma and fear that the attack has instilled are still underappreciated by many outside of Israel. Today, one thing is crystal clear to Israelis: they will never again allow such a thing to happen. Whatever international opprobrium they face, Israelis will not allow a radical group to rule next door while free to train and prepare to conquer Israeli villages and towns so that they can systematically massacre, rape, and kidnap Israeli civilians.

Even though many Israelis blame Netanyahu for the failure, they have also become even more wary of Palestinian power in any form. And although Palestinians may come to blame Hamas for what it has produced for its people, they are no more likely to forgive Israelis for today’s devastation of Gaza or to seek a fundamental, historic reconciliation with Israelis than they were on October 6.

The events of the last three months have confirmed for Israelis and Palestinians their worst fears about the other. Motivated by national, religious, and personal goals and grievances all at once, the conflict turns existential, in the literal sense. The sides believe that they cannot survive if the other has power, meaning that any concession could lead to calamity. This belief encourages preemptive action, lest the enemy gain more power over time. Such a strategy on one side makes the other side’s fear rational—it must now correctly assume it cannot afford to lose, come what may. The result is an ethnic security dilemma, where each side believes it must overpower the other to prevent being itself overpowered and decimated over time.

This fear does not produce a cycle of violence, nor a playing out of ancient hatreds. It does not represent some irrationality or tendency toward vengeance unique to these particular peoples. Instead, this is an equilibrium of rational fear, common to many ethnic conflicts but made more acute by the circumstances of this one. It was this kind of equilibrium that fueled widespread violence in the one state of Mandatory Palestine from the early 1920s until Israel’s founding in 1948. It continued to animate the conflict for decades afterward and it is far worse today than it was just three months ago.

This fear makes achieving a two-state solution far more difficult. Israelis are loath to grant Palestinian security control over one more inch of land. Israel’s concern now is that what befell southern Israel on October 7 could happen to its densely populated center, abutting the West Bank, just as it could along Israel's northern border with Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon. Before October 7, some in the Israeli leadership might have considered enlarging the territory under PA security control. That is no longer the case.

Bullet holes in a broken window near Jenin in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, January 2024

Raneen Sawafta / Reuters

The challenges facing a two-state solution, however, have in no way created support for a one-state solution. The one state now advocated in many circles abroad is often described as a single state including all of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. It would ostensibly include all Israelis and Palestinians and the descendants of Palestinian refugees from 1948 who choose to return. It would be governed, the argument goes, by a secular, liberal Western-style democracy, supposedly at peace.

Such a state’s chances of peace would be vanishingly small, however. One-state advocates assume that in this new state, the extremists on all sides, and the fear that motivated even many moderates to fight, will vanish in the face of a secular notion of justice. Gone will be the religious commitments of extremists and the deep-seated national dreams of so many, such that there will be no minority significant enough to spoil the peace and reignite that all-encompassing fear. Not only will the belligerents of today lay down their weapons but everyone else will have enough trust that they will not pick them up again to avoid sliding back to the ethnic security dilemma. The truth is, if reconciliation through a two-state solution is impossible, as one-staters often claim, a peaceful one state is even less feasible.

It may be that reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians will prove impossible any time soon. The traumas that both societies have faced, and the traumas that these recent events have resurfaced, have immense power to disrupt the best diplomatic efforts. But the fact that a grand “Peace” is out of reach, does not suggest that peace, with a lowercase p, itself transformative, cannot or should not be pursued vigorously, as anti-solutionists always assumed. In fact, there are more choices between perfect reconciliation and the horrors of war. There are also outcomes that would allow both peoples to pursue their own dignity and well-being.

A horizon of political independence for both sides need never have included full reconciliation and justice. It merely had to create the conditions for people to disagree while building their own better futures, assured, at least to a degree, by a border. Similarly, conflict management was given a bad name when it was conflated with anti-solutionism, but it deserves far better consideration in the context of a path toward conflict resolution. It is time to set aside utopian visions, as the cynics have long argued, but, contra the cynics, it is also time to replace them not with kicking the can down the road or with policy passivity in the face of ongoing war and occupation. It is time, rather, to couple a political horizon with serious, transformative, solution-oriented yet hard-nosed conflict management: imperfect, messy, halting, unsatisfactory for all, and yet preferable by far to the current reality.

A LESS TERRIBLE FUTURE

Sound policy must chart a political horizon of meaningful independence for both sides down the road, even if tired language of a two-state solution helps little at this point. There must be a clear commitment by the United States to Palestinian independence alongside Israel, even if its security aspects are deferred into the distant future. And although this horizon should be announced, the United States must set the ground rules for the long interim period before true conflict resolution might be possible and enforce these rules vigorously.

These rules would include confronting radical jihadism, rather than hoping it somehow will moderate. Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as organizations, cannot be allowed a significant role after the war if there is to be credible diplomacy with Israel. Tolerance toward financing of these groups or their safe havens in other countries should end. If Palestinians are to have serious authority in the future, they cannot operate through two armed factions at odds with each other.

The flip side of this policy is no less crucial: the marginalization of the PA and the rapid deterioration of conditions in the West Bank must be arrested. The PA, deeply unpopular and perceived as corrupt, is in need of reform, but it remains the only vehicle that might be used toward productive Palestinian agency over their own affairs that does not entail more devastating war with Israel. With political reform and renewal, a renewed diplomatic horizon, enlarged civilian authority, and a serious clamping down on violence toward Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, the PA has a chance to regain its relevance in Palestinian society.

Although most in the Israeli elite know that the PA, if reformed and revitalized, represents the best chance for a less violent future in Gaza, the Israeli public mood is naturally wary of the idea. Today’s fear is overpowering, and secular Palestinian forces that were central to the second intifada and those years’ long horrors are seen by Israelis as part of the problem rather than the solution. Israeli politicians, Netanyahu first among them, have read the public mood correctly and voiced their opposition to a PA role, at least for now, in Gaza. But this logic need not prevail, if confronted effectively.

Sound policy must chart a political horizon of meaningful independence for both sides.

Taking seriously the fear that dominates Israeli and Palestinian lives today, the parties must not take chances on new complex security structures. Israel will not acquiesce, in the short term, to a larger Palestinian security role in the West Bank and would only agree to one in Gaza if Israel retains considerable freedom of action. There will be no enlargement in the short term of what the Oslo II Accords labeled Area A, a section of the West Bank where there is nominally full Palestinian security authority. There could, however, be a significantly enhanced Palestinian civilian autonomy in what is known as Area B in the West Bank, where Israel retains freedom of action from a security standpoint, but where its footprint could be reduced.

Striving to grant Palestinians far greater civilian control could transform Palestinian lives, but only if it were a meaningful change. It would require not just more money or temporary jobs but real Palestinian authority over the legal zoning of land use, resources, urban planning, and economic development. To achieve this, Area B in the West Bank would have to be enlarged considerably, creating far greater contiguity of civilian Palestinian control in the West Bank, which currently consists of over 160 separate enclaves, without any change to security authority. Enlarging Area B would also exclude settlement construction, which is restricted to Area C, under full Israeli control.

Working to expand civilian Palestinian authority, the United States should steer clear of empty notions of “economic peace,” Netanyahu’s code name for bettering the welfare of Palestinians while blocking any horizon for effective Palestinian governance of their own affairs. Economic development would have to be tied to a political horizon and to genuine Palestinian civilian control over territory and resources, even if overall security authority remains Israeli.

Enlarging Area B would be very difficult, given Israeli political constraints at present, but it is a challenge worth facing in the coming years. For such a plan to gain support in Israel, the United States and Israelis and Palestinians interested in a better future must work consistently to drive a wedge in Israeli minds between Israelis’ legitimate security concerns and the logic behind the expansion of Israeli settlements, which has stronger support than in the past, but still is not the motivating rationale of the median Israeli voter.

Washington should try far more vigorously to counter settler violence against Palestinian civilians.

Although Israel has become far more hawkish on security, a trend that is not likely to abate quickly, it does not follow that Israel must become more hawkish on settlements or the ideology of the “whole land of Israel.” Israel’s turn toward hawkishness in recent decades started with the second intifada, was galvanized by the rise of Hamas after the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, and is now turbocharged by the October 7 attack. Israeli hawkishness is motivated, more than anything, by fear, not ideology.

The Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005 is telling in this regard. Broadly seen in Israel as a failure for opening the door to the Hamas takeover of the strip in 2007, Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza had two disparate components that should be separated in policy today, too. Israel’s military withdrawal from Gaza allowed for a Hamas-governed statelet bordering Israeli towns and villages, but the Israeli removal of settlements from Gaza was a success since it extricated Israeli civilians from Gaza, a security nightmare itself.

Taking Israel’s security concerns seriously, U.S. policy should pursue far more vigorously its efforts to counter settler violence against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. The United States should similarly redouble its efforts to prevent the expansion of settlement land and jurisdictions. The United States should set the longer-term goal, impossible at present, of rolling back settlements in remote parts of the West Bank, even while security authority remains in Israeli hands. The United States has already considered sanctioning violent settlers, and it can use its considerable leverage with the Israeli government far more robustly to limit settlement expansion. October 7 and the war that followed demonstrated how vital U.S. support is for Israel, in materiel and diplomatic cover, and the United States can make clear that the price for such support is joining a U.S. vision for a better future.

Returning to the settlement quarrels with Israel may seem politically unappealing to an American administration, given the track record. But it would be essential to providing a political horizon for the Palestinians. U.S. pressure on this issue would also lessen Palestinians’ fear, which is exacerbated by settler violence and the apparent impunity it enjoys. Palestinian base fear is a threat to Israelis, just as Israeli fears are a threat to Palestinians, despite all the cheering to the contrary from armchair fighters.

GAZA IN RUINS

In Gaza, the challenge is especially daunting, given the death toll and devastation. The war has killed dozens of thousands of Palestinians and displaced hundreds of thousands, at least. According to The Wall Street Journal, about half its buildings have been damaged or destroyed. A path forward in Gaza would require creating a robust and meaningful governing role for the PA, without renewing the security standoff with Israel. This approach would require finding the means to secure and govern Gaza, and, no less difficult, fund its reconstruction. The task in Gaza is immense and daunting, but there are tools that offer at least some avenue forward, if seized upon early and effectively.

Before October 7, the Biden administration was heavily invested in pursuing normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, with controversial U.S. security commitments and support for a Saudi civilian nuclear program included in the agreement. By September 2023, a key question the administration faced was what Palestinian component might be part of the package. Would it resemble the Abraham Accords, which postponed official Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank but did nothing else to promote Palestinian self-rule? Or would it include meaningful changes in the West Bank that would, for the first time since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, enhance Palestinian autonomy in a significant way?

Potential normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia still offers an opportunity to make progress on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and, in a postwar Gaza, to offer at least some hope for Gaza. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, in consort or in parallel, could support Palestinian actors in building a different future in Gaza if Hamas no longer rules there. They have the Arab and Islamic clout to support secular Palestinian players, and eventually the PA itself, entering Gaza to govern it.

Palestinian children waiting for food in Gaza, January 2024

Ibraheem Abu Mustafa / Reuters

If these countries saw a meaningful path toward Palestinian independence—a politically meaningful return for their investment—they may contribute to a massive reconstruction effort in return for a say on Gaza’s direction. Gaining political sway in Gaza—and providing some funding there—would allow them to counter Iranian, Qatari, and Turkish influence in Gaza and provide a genuine Palestinian gain, which would be politically important for them if Saudi Arabia joined the United Arab Emirates in normalization with Israel. Their involvement would certainly not be a panacea for the devastation of the Gaza Strip, but it offers one of the best avenues worth attempting at present.

The United States should have no illusion that Arab—or other—troops could or would engage in the kind of counterinsurgency campaign that will, unfortunately, likely be necessary in Gaza for years to come. If there is any Arab security presence, it would be limited in function and mostly symbolic. No Arab force would seek to provide a robust security role on the ground, nor would Israel trust them to pursue it in full. Yet Arab states could operate pragmatically in Gaza in a day after Hamas—if such a day came—to lessen and eventually end permanent Israeli military presence as credible Palestinian authorities enter. Solving this piece of the conflict could be far more attractive to Saudi Arabia than what would ultimately be technical changes to PA authority in the West Bank, given the global visibility and dire need for change in Gaza, and the public cache that working to save and rebuild Gaza could afford. This sort of endeavor, with all the risks involved, and all the chances of failure, would be a goal worthy of a transformational regional deal.

Rebuilding Gaza—physically and politically—would require enlisting all positive actors available. Egypt, which fears that the war could saddle it with responsibility for Gaza—a fundamental fear for a country that occupied the strip between 1948 and 1967—or with an influx of Palestinian refugees, would need assurances from Israel to play a positive role in Gaza going forward. Yet with proper assurances, Egypt could be brought into a broader Arab coalition with secular Palestinian voices, and its intelligence services could also provide unique influence over what happens in Gaza, where they still have sway, even among remnants of Hamas. A full Arab-Israeli effort cannot advance fully in the short term, as Israel is mired in its war and in sorting out its domestic political puzzle. Yet building this Gulf-Egyptian-Palestinian-Israeli understanding should start before the war ends, even if it falls well short of a full regional realignment.

EYES ON THE PRIZE

Even if a solution to the conflict is currently unavailable, aimlessly kicking the can down the road is not a reasonable strategy. That approach was not conflict management; it was a strategy that allowed the conflict to manage both sides. Effective, solution-oriented conflict management can look very different. It would set a clear horizon of political independence for both parties—something akin to a two-state solution—toward which all should work, and produce a genuine effort to steer things toward less violence and fewer grievances in the future. It would be extremely difficult, yet far easier and less bloody than any of the alternatives.

Solution-oriented conflict management would take very seriously Israelis’ fears about security, exacerbated on October 7, while taking a hard stance toward Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank that fuels Palestinian fears. The goal of this approach would be to gradually reunite Gaza and the West Bank under a constructive PA that had real civilian authority, including enhanced territorial contiguity of Area B without additional ability to threaten Israel.

For years, negotiators, including Palestinians, have discussed a demilitarized Palestinian state as a component of a two-state solution. It is time to take demilitarization more seriously, even as all sides work seriously to revive the prospect of Palestinian independence.

None of these steps would produce lofty visions of enduring peace. In fact, the United States should be wary of promising to achieve ambitious solutions any time soon, when so few people believe they are available. Yet grandiose notions of peace should not be the enemy of improvement, which is so direly needed at present. The United States is naturally, and perhaps justifiably, weary of managing this conflict. It also has genuinely more important issues and regions to contemplate. But if 2023 is any indication, it would be far better for pragmatic U.S. policymakers to use American power to shift the course of events in the Holy Land than to hand the situation over to extremists and to the bloody dynamics they encourage.

• NATAN SACHS is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution’s foreign policy program and Director of its Center for Middle East Policy.

Foreign Affairs · by Natan Sachs · January 19, 2024

​21. Triple threat: N Korea, Iran flaunt new missile tech to Russia

Excerpts:

In a December 2023 study for the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Daniel Salisbury and Darya Dolzikova note that North Korea has long exported ballistic missile technology, making up 40% of all ballistic missile sales to developing countries from 1987 and 2009 for a total of 500 systems.

Salisbury and Dolzikova note that newly developed North Korean systems are more attractive to potential customers while phasing out older systems creates a surplus of goods and expertise for export.

They say that North Korean surplus missile technology could be tempting to clients with a limited capability to absorb new technology, constrained budgets, or systems that are inoperable or need spare parts.

However, they also point out that North Korea may choose not to export its latest missile technology including hypersonic weapons. Still, they note that North Korea’s missile collaboration with Iran has involved higher-end systems as Iran has an extensive missile manufacturing capacity and export capability.

As for Iran, Lara Jakes and David Sanger note in The New York Times this month that the use of an advanced missile such as the Kheiber Shekan in Syria when a less-advanced missile could do the same damage shows that Iran is interested in testing its missile technology in combat while also sending a warning to the US and Israel.

North Korea and Iran’s advances in missile technology may become increasingly attractive to Russia, which is known to have used North Korean missiles and Iranian drones in the ongoing Ukraine war.

This month, Asia Times reported on Russia’s use of North Korean short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) to strike Ukraine and its efforts to source Iranian missiles to replenish its depleted stockpiles.

Russia most likely used North Korean KN-23 and KN-24 SRBMs, analogous to the Russian Iskander-M and US MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS). The KN-23 notably resembles the Iskander-M and may have been designed with Russian assistance.

Iran could sell ballistic missiles to Russia but it may be holding back for multiple reasons. These include a desire to keep critical technologies confidential, maintain a missile stockpile in case of a wider Middle East conflict as well as the doubtful military value of ballistic missiles to break the stalemate in Ukraine.

Triple threat: N Korea, Iran flaunt new missile tech to Russia - Asia Times

North Korea and Iran have long collaborated on missile development and recent progress could bolster Russia’s fight in Ukraine

asiatimes.com · by Gabriel Honrada · January 19, 2024

In a striking display of advanced military capabilities, North Korea and Iran have made significant strides in their ballistic missile programs, posing new challenges to global security dynamics.

This month, Military Watch Magazine reported that North Korea had launched a new intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) to replace the Hwasong-12, which entered service in 2017 and has the potential to strike targets across the Pacific including US military facilities on Guam.

Military Watch Magazine cites the North Korean state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) saying that the test “was aimed at verifying the gliding and maneuvering characteristics of intermediate-range hypersonic maneuverable controlled warhead and the reliability of newly developed multi-stage high-thrust solid-fuel engines.”

The report says that the missile is estimated to have a range of over 4,000 kilometers and is developed as a direct successor to the Hwasong-12, an older liquid-fueled missile design expected to be replaced by the new type in 2025.

At the same time, The Warzone reported this month that Iran had used its new Kheiber Shekan medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) for the first time in Syria’s Idlib province, marking one of three attacks carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Aerospace Force (IRGC-AF) in three countries over the past two days.

The Warzone notes that the Kheiber Shekan MRBM strike was likely the longest ever by an Iranian ballistic missile. The report says the type is Iran’s most advanced solid-propellant missile, with a reported range of 1,450 kilometers and a separating warhead.

Solid-fuel missiles have several advantages over liquid-fuel designs. In particular, they do not need to be fueled before launch, are more accessible and safer to operate, and require less logistical support, which increases their survivability compared to liquid-fuel systems.

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Liquid-fuel systems generate more thrust and power but require more complex technology and extra weight. Solid missile fuel burns quickly, produces a large amount of thrust over a short time and can be stored without degradation for long periods.

Iran’s Kheiber Shekan missile. Photo: X Screengrab

North Korea and Iran are known to have mutually supported each other’s missile programs, swapping critical technologies in a transactional partnership made stronger by US sanctions and pressure.

In a November 2023 article for 38 North, Samuel Ramani mentions that while North Korea and Iran’s materiel assistance to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has generated global headlines, North Korea-Iran cooperation has continued under the radar.

Ramani says that North Korean technology transfer to Iran dates back to the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War and subsequently weakened as Iran sought commercial ties with South Korea after the 2015 signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). However, he says those ties resurged after the 2018 US withdrawal from the nuclear agreement.

Asia Times reported in February 2021 that North Korea and Iran resumed cooperation in developing long-range missiles in 2020, citing a confidential UN report. The report stated that the continued collaboration included transferring critical parts, with parts shipments occurring that year.

Ramani notes that Iran’s Khorramshahr missile, first launched in 2017, resembles North Korea’s Musudan or Hwasong-10, which the latter tested in 2016.

He notes that while North Korea’s sale of R-27 rocket engines to Iran has yet to be confirmed, reports of Iran’s purchase of Hwasong-10 missiles go back to 2005. US intelligence has tracked Iran’s search for a high-performance North Korean propulsion system since 2010.

Jonathan Corrado mentions in a September 2023 article for War on the Rocks that Iran’s Shahab-3 missile could be based on North Korea’s Nodong missile and that Iran’s space launch vehicles bear similarity with North Korea’s Hwasong-14 missiles.

Given those examples, it is plausible that Iran may have developed its Kheibar Sheikan with North Korean assistance, despite Tehran’s insistence that the missile is an entirely indigenous weapon.

North Korea and Iran each have cause to advertise their progress in missile technology, ranging from weapons tests to threat signaling and showcasing their wares to potential buyers.

In a December 2023 study for the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Daniel Salisbury and Darya Dolzikova note that North Korea has long exported ballistic missile technology, making up 40% of all ballistic missile sales to developing countries from 1987 and 2009 for a total of 500 systems.

Salisbury and Dolzikova note that newly developed North Korean systems are more attractive to potential customers while phasing out older systems creates a surplus of goods and expertise for export.

They say that North Korean surplus missile technology could be tempting to clients with a limited capability to absorb new technology, constrained budgets, or systems that are inoperable or need spare parts.

However, they also point out that North Korea may choose not to export its latest missile technology including hypersonic weapons. Still, they note that North Korea’s missile collaboration with Iran has involved higher-end systems as Iran has an extensive missile manufacturing capacity and export capability.

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This picture taken on September 28, 2021, and released from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency on September 29, shows the country’s Academy of Defense Science test-firing a claimed hypersonic missile called the Hwasong-8. Photo; KCNA / KNS

As for Iran, Lara Jakes and David Sanger note in The New York Times this month that the use of an advanced missile such as the Kheiber Shekan in Syria when a less-advanced missile could do the same damage shows that Iran is interested in testing its missile technology in combat while also sending a warning to the US and Israel.

North Korea and Iran’s advances in missile technology may become increasingly attractive to Russia, which is known to have used North Korean missiles and Iranian drones in the ongoing Ukraine war.

This month, Asia Times reported on Russia’s use of North Korean short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) to strike Ukraine and its efforts to source Iranian missiles to replenish its depleted stockpiles.

Russia most likely used North Korean KN-23 and KN-24 SRBMs, analogous to the Russian Iskander-M and US MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS). The KN-23 notably resembles the Iskander-M and may have been designed with Russian assistance.

Iran could sell ballistic missiles to Russia but it may be holding back for multiple reasons. These include a desire to keep critical technologies confidential, maintain a missile stockpile in case of a wider Middle East conflict as well as the doubtful military value of ballistic missiles to break the stalemate in Ukraine.

asiatimes.com · by Gabriel Honrada · January 19, 2024

22. The War in Ukraine Now Has Its First Draft – The One Element Keeping Ukraine From Total Defeat

Excerpts:

What is clear in Trofimov’s account of the war’s first year is that Ukraine didn’t simply need weapons and aid after its initial successes on the battlefield; what it needed was weapons and aid fast. By 2023, more than a year after the initial requests were made, Trofimov describes the Ukrainian reaction after the country at last received more than 200 tanks, nearly 900 fighting vehicles, and 150 artillery pieces. “In Kyiv, satisfaction with this breakthrough was tinged with sadness. These numbers weren’t too far from what the Ukrainians had asked for in May, a request rejected at the time as unrealistic. If these weapons had been supplied in August, when Russia’s military was stretched thin, they could have ensured a strategic Ukrainian victory and possibly ended the war.”

Today, the end of the war is nowhere in sight, and, as Trofimov notes at the close of this book, “a long, grueling fight” lies ahead. That fight will, of course, be fought on the battlefield. But it will also be waged in the story about Ukraine, in the first and second drafts of history that are right now being written. Trofimov has collected a chorus of voices that add up to the truest first draft I have yet to read of the first chaotic year. Like those soldiers breathlessly recounting the just-fought battle, he’s helped us make sense of one of the grimmest wars of our time.

The War in Ukraine Now Has Its First Draft

The One Element Keeping Ukraine From Total Defeat

A new book recounts the first year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from the ground up.

By Elliot Ackerman

The Atlantic · by Elliot Ackerman · January 18, 2024

The tired truism that journalism is history’s first draft does not quite apply to covering war—or not usually, in any case. In those battles that I’ve fought in and those that I’ve reported on, as soon as the gunfire ebbs and soldiers start passing out the post-firefight cigarette or candy bar—or whatever corporeal ritual they’re engaging in to remind themselves that they’re still alive—invariably, they begin to tell stories. They huddle in small groups urgently talking about what just happened, trying to bring order to the violence and chaos they’ve experienced. One guy will talk about entering a house on the left. The other guy will remind him that they entered on the right. They’ll argue about where another friend was shot. The story will begin to congeal when everyone agrees that this is what happened—a first draft, which then, in the hands of a journalist, becomes a second one.

Ever since Homer decided to sort the heroes from the villains at the gates of Troy, the stakes in a war story are always exceptionally high. The seeds of the next war tend to be sown by the stories we tell about the most recent one—whether that’s the German “stab in the back” theory at the end of the First World War, or, more recently, Russian claims that Ukraine is a “fake nation” that exists only because of the lost Cold War.

If history becomes the final battlefield on which a war is waged, Yaroslav Trofimov’s Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine’s War of Independence might be the opening salvo in the struggle to define what has happened in Ukraine over the past two years, even as the war continues. Trofimov, who is Ukrainian-born and the chief foreign-affairs correspondent of The Wall Street Journal, crisscrossed the country in the first year after Russia’s invasion, gathering the stories of those who experienced the brunt of Vladimir Putin’s army and who are enduring the war of attrition that has followed. The anecdotes in this book—the civilian massacre in Bucha, the meat grinder of Bakhmut—possess the type of frenetic intensity that reminded me of those post-firefight stories.

Our Enemies Will Vanish - The Russian Invasion And Ukraine's War Of Independence

By Yaroslav Trofimov

Except Trofimov isn’t in these stories, though he easily could’ve been, as many war correspondents with far less personal investment in the conflicts they’ve covered readily introduce the personal pronoun into their writing. Instead, he allows the events to unfold under his watchful eye. The result is a kind of cinema verité on the page, an account of the war that’s as close as one can get to that first draft of history as it’s spoken by those who experienced the events. The reader gets a crystal-clear vision of the war’s first year that also reveals the secret weapon that allowed the Ukrainian people and their army to surprise the world—a weapon that tragically has lost much of its power in a war that has more recently descended into a deadly and relentless slog.

Trofimov’s story starts before the invasion. He recounts how much of the outside world had decided that Ukraine was lost before the fighting had even begun. Conventional wisdom among Ukraine’s allies was that the country stood little chance against Putin’s military juggernaut. But in the second week of February 2022, days before the invasion, Trofimov found that many of Ukraine’s military commanders hadn’t bought into this defeatist narrative.

On a visit Trofimov took to Chernihiv, on Ukraine’s northern border with Russia, Serhiy Kryvonos, a retired major general and a veteran of the war in the Donbas, was telling a different story. He scoffed at the idea of Russian military primacy. “We beat them before, and we will beat them now. Look at Afghanistan: the Taliban had nothing to fight with, but they ended up forcing the United States to withdraw. What is most important is not the military hardware, but the motivated, trained people. No army in the world could ever overcome a motivated people.”

Read: ‘We only need some metal things’

Weeks would pass before many commentators could believe that Ukrainian resistance had, in fact, stopped the Russian army. Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky, recalled, “There was an absolute bewilderment on the part of our partners. They didn’t comprehend what was going on.” The visual manifestation of this in the American media were the breathless dispatches in the war’s early days about the massive, 20-plus-mile-long convoy of Russian military equipment headed toward Kyiv. Surely, there was no way that Ukraine’s ad hoc resistance could repel such an advance. However, the longer that Russian convoy sat on the road, the more apparent it became that this wasn’t a blitzkrieg thrust at the heart of Ukraine but a Russian traffic jam born of the mismanagement of supply lines.

Our Enemies Will Vanish takes its title from a line in the Ukrainian national anthem (“Our enemies will vanish, like dew in the sun”), and interwoven throughout this military and political narrative of the war’s first year are stories of enemies vanishing—like the Russian columns at the gates of Kyiv—but also of enemies suddenly appearing.

Although the Russian invasion has become a story of Ukrainian resistance, Trofimov’s chronological account—broken into 11 parts with thematic titles like “Dignity, Destruction, Attrition”—doesn’t shy away from telling the stories of collaboration in cities such as Kherson, where Russian agents recruited former Ukrainian officials to serve as their proxies. A lieutenant in the Ukrainian army characterized these collaborators as “lovers of the Russian world who wanted to live in it,” as if Russia weren’t a place but a state of mind, a narrative universe one lives inside of as a palliative.

Putin understands the power of stories. For Russians, the war in Ukraine has become whatever Putin says it is, whether “a special military operation,” a project of “de-Nazification,” or even an “anti-colonial struggle.” The latter is how Putin absurdly characterized the war in a speech he gave to mark the annexation of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia, a moment Trofimov characterized as “the biggest land grab of the century.” For Ukrainians, there has been an equal and urgent parsing of history and language that has attended this war. Trofimov notes:

Putin and Zelensky share the same first name, that of Kyiv’s Grand Prince Volodymyr, or Vladimir in Russian, who had brought Christianity to the Rus. My own parents named me after Volodymyr’s son, Grand Prince of Rus Yaroslav the Wise … To many Ukrainians, Moscow, an uninhabited swamp when princes Volodymyr and Yaroslav were alive, had misappropriated their history—and with it, the right to the very name Russia. After the war began in 2022, tens of thousands of Ukrainians even signed a formal request for Zelensky to rename Russia as Muscovy.

Arguing over place names and the spellings of Volodymyr versus Vladimir may seem like a semantic game amid Europe’s largest land war in three generations, but the imposition of a Russophone existence is the reason Ukrainians are fighting and dying, so that their capital will remain Kyiv as opposed to Kiev. The quickest way to change a story is to change the names. Putin knows this. So does Trofimov, whose book filled with the old names stands as a rebuke to erasure.

Ironically, as conscientious as Putin was in shaping a false narrative that legitimized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he fell victim to a different false narrative, one fed to him by his own generals about the competency of his military. Not only was the Russian military beset by corruption, in which officers reported false readiness numbers to their superiors, but it was also saddled with an antiquated Soviet command philosophy that relied on centralized decision making and discouraged initiative from battlefield commanders. This proved disastrous for Russia. After the 2014 Russian invasion, Ukrainians had embraced a NATO-centric method of warfare that relied on “mission command,” an operational philosophy that empowered subordinate commanders to execute their missions as they saw fit after understanding the intentions of their higher commanders. Mission command allowed the decentralized Ukrainians to outmaneuver the Russians in the early days of the war, inflicting heavy casualties on them.

“Running an army this way requires a high degree of trust,” Trofimov writes, “something that comes more naturally in a democracy. It was the secret to Ukraine’s resilience.” The two militaries’ differing command philosophies take on outsize importance in the war’s first year, embodying the broader conflict between Russian authoritarianism and Ukrainian democracy. Andriy Zagorodnyuk, who headed these reforms at Ukraine’s ministry of defense noted, “This is what saved Ukraine at the outset of the war. When the offensives began on many operational directions, one of the goals of the Russians was to overwhelm Ukraine by the quantity of engagements. If the approach had remained centralized, Ukraine wouldn’t have been able to manage it.”

In the spring of 2022, the nature of the war began to shift, from one of maneuver to one of attrition. Ukrainian resistance forced Putin to abandon his push on Kyiv, and the focus of the war shifted east to the Donbas, where the Russians dug in. Putin’s military, with its numerical advantage and centralized command structure, was well suited to this style of fighting. The Russians didn’t need to make quick decisions but simply had to feed the meat grinder, as Trofimov characterizes these battles.

In places such as Bakhmut, towns that were of little strategic importance, large-scale fire fights took place for no other reason than for Russia to bleed Ukraine and vice versa. A Ukrainian soldier summarized the dynamic in Bakhmut as “The Russians are emptying their prisons and sending their worst to die here, while we are losing some of our best. It’s not at all a fair trade.” Also, as Trofimov points out, “Russia’s bigger size meant that even with lopsided casualties, Moscow was still winning the attrition war over the long run.”

Read: Zombie history stalks Ukraine

Throughout the first year of the war, Ukraine made continuous requests for weapons from the United States and NATO. Reading Trofimov’s accounting of these requests, it’s clear that Ukraine’s allies, while publicly praising Ukrainian valor, took infuriating half measures when asked to fulfill President Zelensky’s requests for military aid. Not even spectacular Ukrainian success and gross Russian incompetence could dispel a belief among Western leaders that Ukraine was, ultimately, weak, while Russia was strong. Trofimov notes that in May 2022, after Ukraine had repelled the Russians from the gates of Kyiv, an adviser to Zelensky published a wish list of weapons systems: “1,000 howitzers, 300 multiple-launch rocket systems, and 500 tanks. Western officials dismissed the request as outlandish” while continuing to publicly pledge their support.

Early in the war, U.S. and NATO hesitation was largely rooted in a belief that the Ukrainians couldn’t win. Once it became clear that Ukraine was effectively resisting Russia’s invasion, the source of that hesitation shifted to Western fears about Putin. The Biden administration and other NATO leaders continued to believe Putin’s nuclear threats. Trofimov writes that decisions about military aid began to adhere to “a perverse logic: no help forthcoming when Ukraine had momentum, but a move to step in when the situation became critical and the Ukrainian military faced collapse.” Ukraine’s foreign minister, speaking to Trofimov, said, “We need to completely change the optics. Instead of waiting for a crisis in order for them to make a decision, they need to make a decision now in order to avoid a crisis.”

What is clear in Trofimov’s account of the war’s first year is that Ukraine didn’t simply need weapons and aid after its initial successes on the battlefield; what it needed was weapons and aid fast. By 2023, more than a year after the initial requests were made, Trofimov describes the Ukrainian reaction after the country at last received more than 200 tanks, nearly 900 fighting vehicles, and 150 artillery pieces. “In Kyiv, satisfaction with this breakthrough was tinged with sadness. These numbers weren’t too far from what the Ukrainians had asked for in May, a request rejected at the time as unrealistic. If these weapons had been supplied in August, when Russia’s military was stretched thin, they could have ensured a strategic Ukrainian victory and possibly ended the war.”

Today, the end of the war is nowhere in sight, and, as Trofimov notes at the close of this book, “a long, grueling fight” lies ahead. That fight will, of course, be fought on the battlefield. But it will also be waged in the story about Ukraine, in the first and second drafts of history that are right now being written. Trofimov has collected a chorus of voices that add up to the truest first draft I have yet to read of the first chaotic year. Like those soldiers breathlessly recounting the just-fought battle, he’s helped us make sense of one of the grimmest wars of our time.

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

The Atlantic · by Elliot Ackerman · January 18, 2024

23. ‘Wake up!’ European lawmakers warn Washington over Ukraine aid delays

‘Wake up!’ European lawmakers warn Washington over Ukraine aid delays

BY LAURA KELLY - 01/19/24 5:30 AM ET

https://thehill.com/policy/international/4416734-european-lawmakers-warn-ukraine-aid-delays/

European lawmakers visiting Washington this week issued dire warnings to Democrats and Republicans that the U.S. needs to help Ukraine secure victory over Russia this year or risk losing European assistance in a potential conflict with China over Taiwan. 

The plea came from a delegation of chairs of foreign affairs committees from six countries in Europe and Canada, meeting with U.S. lawmakers in between their fraught negotiations over border security policy that is holding up a major funding package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

“The reality is the U.S. also needs a wake up call,” said U.K. Member of Parliament Alicia Kearns, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

“If Taiwan is invaded, the U.S. will need to lead on it alongside Japan, Korea and Australia, and we in Europe will have to lead on Ukraine, and we’ll have to turn around and say to the U.S. we cannot give you what you want in support for Taiwan.”

The European lawmakers framed their message as tough love for an ally that is engulfed in partisan chaos.

​​”When it comes to the Democrats, our message has been, use some muscle, stop bunkering down, don’t let the Republicans set your agenda on foreign policy,” Kearns continued.

“You put the word China in anything, it passes on the Hill.” 

And while the Europeans defended their contributions and commitments to Ukraine – $160 billion between Europe, Canada and Japan — they also conceded that there is no substitute for America’s military support for Ukraine, or its leadership on the global stage. 

“It’s painful that you have to spend 80 percent of your energy waking up Washington, to be Washington,” said Žygimantas Pavilionis, Chair of Foreign Affairs Committee in the Lithuanian Parliament. 

“It takes years to wake up Washington, so please guys, wake up!”

The delegation, which included lawmakers from Canada, the Czech Republic, Spain, France and Lithuania, said they were optimistic that Republicans and Democrats are committed to delivering on President Biden’s $60 billion request to support Ukraine’s defensive war against Russia.

“Not a single Republican that met with us said to us that the money isn’t there for Ukraine. Not a single Republican said they are negotiating to reduce down the Ukraine amount,” Kearns said. 

“And we met with, trust me, ones who would like to never hear the word Ukraine again.”

During their trip, the delegation met with lawmakers including Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Reps. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), Thomas Kean (R-N.J.), Bill Keating (D-Mass.), Andy Barr (R-Ky.), Brian Mast (R-Fla.) and Andy Harris (R-Md.). 

Republicans writ large have increasingly soured on Ukraine support over the past year, with many arguing taxpayer dollars should be focused on domestic issues. Former President Trump has repeatedly promised to end the war if he returns to the White House, raising fears that he will pressure Ukraine to cede territory to Russia. 

However, the group of European lawmakers, speaking in a roundtable meeting with reporters on Thursday, did not express major concerns about a second Trump term, pointing to areas for cooperation on priorities like Iran that link to other global conflicts.

But they were critical that U.S. lawmakers seemed dismissive of the impact of campaign rhetoric, saying Trump’s threatening U.S. commitments to NATO undermine America’s reliability overseas, and embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. 

“You make a flippant comment for domestic benefit… the repercussions are serious,” Kearns said. “And we can’t afford Biden sitting there on his hands bunkering down because he is fearful of what the Republicans will or won’t do or how they’ll use it against him. That’s been my biggest concern and the message we’re trying to land.”

The European lawmakers will be watching Biden closely as he hosts the NATO summit in Washington in June, concerned the U.S. may fall short on commitments to Ukraine. 

The president and his senior aides have pushed back against calls to give Ukraine an invitation to join the alliance – a point of conflict that played out publicly during the Vilnius summit last year. But the European lawmakers are concerned that without major commitments from the U.S., Putin will grab the initiative. 

“Europe is united on the end state, the end state is to have a Russia that cannot reinvade a neighbor within the next two to five years — which they are currently on track to be able to do — but actually not be able to invade a neighbor for the next 20 years,” Kearns said. 

The $60 billion proposed by Biden for Ukraine is expected to cover Kyiv’s needs for at least a year, a commitment that European leaders welcomed. But with the war in a stalemate, and likely to drag on for months more, future U.S. support is anything but certain. 

Ali Ehsassi, Chair of Foreign Affairs Committee for the Parliament of Canada, said the divisiveness among U.S. lawmakers over Ukraine — and global engagement in general — was “unsettling” and “nerve wracking.”

“We want to have assurances that this is a sturdy alliance that will continue to brainstorm together,” Ehsassi said. 

“I’m sure Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi also see where those cracks are and that’s not a good thing either. So I’m very much concerned about the symbolism as well, and how it ricochets in foreign capitals.”

​24. US battle with Houthi rebels shows no signs of stopping

US battle with Houthi rebels shows no signs of stopping

BY BRAD DRESS - 01/18/24 6:55 PM ET

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4416914-us-battle-houthis-no-signs-stopping/

The Houthi rebels, unbowed by U.S. strikes, are continuing to attack ships in the Red Sea, putting the Biden administration in a bind as it works to stomp out the Yemeni militant group’s aggression and resume global trade operations. 

An initial series of strikes last week on Houthi assets in Yemen was meant to degrade the Iranian-backed group’s capabilities to keep up the Red Sea attacks, but the Houthis emerged intact and with a resolve to continue their aggression. 

The U.S. continued to strike the Houthis this week and the rebel group has responded with more attacks. 

All signs are pointing toward a prolonged conflict. But a drawn-out battle between the Houthis and the U.S. will only deepen global shipping disruptions, worsen a humanitarian crisis in Yemen and inflame the Middle East as Washington seeks to contain a wider regional war, analysts say.

Like other Iranian-backed groups, the Houthis have tied their operations to Israel’s war in Gaza and pledged to keep fighting as long as Israeli soldiers continue their fight in the Palestinian enclave.

“Americans want the seas to be safe for the support and resources provided to the Israeli enemy while starving the Palestinian people,” Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi said in a speech Thursday shared on pro-Iranian Telegram channels. 

“We warn against weariness towards the oppression of the Palestinian people. The longer the siege and starvation continue, the greater the responsibility on our nation.” 

The top concern for the Pentagon is how to resume global trade through the Red Sea. Shipping prices are surging as companies are forced to avoid the Red Sea shortcut and go around Africa. 

But tit-for-tat attacks may disrupt transit through the corridor even more, scaring off ships seeking to avoid conflict, said Caroline Rose with the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy. 

“Their long-term plan is, of course, to try and secure this waterway,“ said Rose, director of the think tank’s Blind Spots program. “In the short term, it actually encourages ships not to use that waterway because of the increase in instability and insecurity.” 

And while manufacturing companies are mainly eating the price hike for now, months of fighting could create a serious supply problem and spike costs for average consumers, said Sridhar Tayur, professor of operations management at Carnegie Mellon University. 

“Firms are very circumspect on passing those increased prices to consumers. But at some point they have to — they can’t be absorbing it,” Tayur said. “We’re not seeing price increases at this moment, but if this starts taking longer, we should probably expect that.” 

The U.S. resorted to strikes after other deterrence efforts failed. The Houthis began attacking ships in late November, prompting the Pentagon to set up a multi-nation task force to protect ships at sea. 

But the task force, which still includes warships patrolling the Red Sea, did not stop Houthi attacks, and major companies are still avoiding the route. 

Under pressure, the U.S. and the U.K. last week launched retaliatory strikes for the first time since the November conflict began. American forces had conducted a total of five rounds of strikes in Yemen as of Thursday, targeting radar, missile and launch capabilities of the Houthis. 

But after every strike, the Houthis have responded with yet another attack, underscoring a troubling pattern and raising questions about whether the U.S. deterrence can work. President Biden acknowledged on Thursday that U.S. deterrence efforts were struggling to stop the attacks. 

“Are they stopping the Houthis? No,” Biden said. “Are they going to continue? Yes.” 

The Pentagon says the U.S. is not at war with the Houthis but will continue to defend commercial shipping in the Red Sea. It said the efforts are degrading Houthi operations, even if attacks aren’t stopping. 

Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said the U.S. has been “very successful” in the repeated strikes, destroying nearly all of the selected targets. She said that has forced the Houthis to launch smaller-scale attacks. 

“We never said that the Houthis would immediately stop,” Singh said. “We’ve been able to degrade and severely disrupt and destroy their capabilities since [last week]. But it’s really on them when they want to decide to stop interrupting commercial shipping.” 

But other analysts say the Houthis are battle-tested after years of enduring bombing campaigns from Saudi Arabia and U.S.-backed forces in Yemen.

“The Houthis are far more savvy, prepared, and well-equipped than many Western commentators realize. They are highly experienced in waging war after years of brutal conflict,” wrote Farea Al-Muslimi, a research fellow with the think tank Chatham House. 

“Their recklessness, and willingness to escalate in the face of a challenge, is also significant and always underrated.” 

Besides strikes, the U.S. is also trying to get at the Houthis in other ways. 

The Biden administration announced Wednesday it categorized the Houthis as Specially Designated Global Terrorists, an attempt to make them a pariah on the global stage. It also opens up a path for the U.S. to sever some of their financial connections. 

The action comes after Biden in 2021 lifted a previous Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation on the Houthis, which was enacted under the Trump administration. 

Some Republican lawmakers hammered Biden this week for failing to reinstate the FTO, a more powerful designation. 

“The Houthis are seeking to disrupt the international economic system, attacking civilian commercial ships, including American vessels, in the Red Sea, and launching rockets at American military service members,” wrote Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “If this isn’t the definition of a Foreign Terrorist Organization, I don’t know what it is.” 

Still, it’s unclear if any designation will deter the Houthis. 

“When it comes to the financing of the Houthis, particularly if it is connected to the Iranians, that’s already outside of the channels” that might be impacted by U.S. sanctions, said Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “I don’t foresee that being significant at all.” 

Parsi argued it was time to discuss a cease-fire in Gaza because the U.S. position to defend Israel’s war was becoming costly, with Iranian-backed groups mounting attacks across the Middle East and the Biden administration falling into disfavor worldwide for supporting Israel.

“The U.S. is spending a lot of resources and absorbing a lot of costs to refuse to do something that actually lies in our interests,” Parsi said of a cease-fire. 

The terrorist designation could also deepen a humanitarian crisis in Yemen, where millions of civilians have been struggling to meet basic needs since the breakout of war between the Houthis and the Yemeni government in 2014. 

Today, the Houthis control about 75 percent of Yemen, putting most of the civilian population under their oversight.  

The Biden administration said it would carve out humanitarian exemptions in the terrorism designation, but humanitarian groups have raised concerns about the designation scaring off private companies and banks from servicing Yemen, with a knock-on impact on humanitarian groups.

“There’s still a huge amount of uncertainty as to how everyone is going to respond,” said Anastasia Moran, associate director for U.S. advocacy at the International Rescue Committee. “Humanitarian operations don’t exist in a vacuum … we exist in this ecosystem with private actors in Yemen.” 

Moran also raised concerns about the conflict between the Houthis and the U.S. derailing peace talks in Yemen between the rebel group and the Yemeni government.  

The warring parties have been in a fragile truce since 2022 and that has alleviated widespread suffering, but long-term U.S.-Houthi fighting could seriously endanger talks from reaching a more permanent peace and ending the humanitarian crisis, she said. 

“This was moving on a path where there could be economic recovery,” she said. “In the last few weeks, I think everyone is concerned that you have two years of very fragile progress that could all be lost.” 

​25. US Military Can’t Sustain Arctic Operations, ‘Let Alone Dominate,’ Experts Say

US Military Can’t Sustain Arctic Operations, ‘Let Alone Dominate,’ Experts Say

thewarhorse.org · by Sonner Kehrt · January 18, 2024

Missile launchers illuminated under the glowing green fingers of the northern lights, white-and-gray camo with fur-lined hoods, Green Berets perched two to a snowmobile—these were the scenes from Arctic Edge in 2022, a biannual joint training exercise first convened in 2018 to train troops to operate in the marginal conditions north of the Arctic Circle.

“[These exercises] bring us all together as a joint, combined, and allied force to think about how we can defend the Arctic, how we can work together to not just survive up here, but thrive and be able to protect our homeland,” the commander of the military’s Alaskan Command, Lt. Gen. David Krumm, said after the 2022 exercise.

Naval Special Warfare members perform a high-altitude low-opening jump during the 2022 Arctic Edge Exercise. Photo by Mass Communication Spc. 2nd Class Trey Hutcheson, courtesy of the U.S. Navy.

In recent years, the U.S. military has highlighted exercises like this to underscore the importance of the Arctic, trumpeting its commitment to protecting U.S. security interests there.

The military “must be able to … shape the security environment” in the region, states the Pentagon’s 2019 congressional report on Arctic strategy.

“U.S. Naval forces must operate more assertively across the Arctic Region,” proclaims the Navy’s “Strategic Blueprint for the Arctic,” released in 2021.

The Army published its strategy for “regaining Arctic dominance” the same year.

But while these and other recent policies highlight the region’s critical importance, along with the military’s growing interest in it as climate change reshapes the polar environment, experts argue the United States has done little to commit the targeted, long-term investment or build up the capacity needed to lead in the Arctic.

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Fixed Bayonets—Paratroopers and Banzai at Grubbs Ravine

“We don’t have the capability to sustain forces up there,” says Ryan Burke, the research director of the Homeland Defense Institute at U.S. Northern Command, as well as an affiliate professor at University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Center for Arctic Security and Resilience and the co-director of Project 6633 at West Point’s Modern War Institute. “We don’t have the infrastructure, we don’t have the know-how, we don’t have the institutional knowledge. We don’t have any of what we need to be present, let alone to actually dominate the damn thing.”

As interest in the region grows, the military has begun to make some changes. In December, Finland, which joined NATO this year, gave the U.S. military access to 15 Finnish bases and the ability to store weapons and equipment in the country; Sweden, which has applied to join NATO, also gave the U.S. access to 17 bases. The agreements follow a similar pact with Norway the previous year. In 2022, Eielson Air Force Base, just over 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle, stood up a full complement of F-35s. Marine units now rotate through cold-weather training with their Norwegian counterparts, and during the past several years, U.S. forces have participated in trainings like Arctic Edge or Arctic Challenge, a Nordic-led joint military exercise.

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But much of the necessary communication systems, general infrastructure, and, critically, sustained presence and training needed to understand and operate in such a complex environment has yet to materialize. The lofty visions promised in recent strategies don’t always match the realities on the ground.

“The Army is a land force,” Burke says of the Army’s promise to “dominate” the region. “The Arctic is principally a maritime domain.”

As for the maritime side of things, the U.S. military has just two functional polar icebreakers. Plans to bring on additional ships have been repeatedly delayed. The operational capacity of the U.S. military to regulate economic interests or respond to a large-scale event, such as an oil spill or a mass casualty scenario, isn’t assured.

“The Army has a strategy, the Navy has a strategy, the Air Force has a strategy,” Burke says. “Congratulations. We can’t do any of it.”

‘You Need Lots of Other Things’

Sixty years ago, at the height of the Cold War, the U.S. icebreaker fleet was quadruple the size it is today. The Navy and the Coast Guard operated seven heavily armed Wind Class diesel-electric ships between them, along with the Coast Guard cutter Glacier, a larger heavy icebreaker operated first by the Navy and then by the Coast Guard.

“During the Cold War, the Arctic was probably more important militarily than ever before in history,” says Scott Savitz, a senior engineer at RAND who worked on a recent report assessing U.S. military arctic capabilities. “It was the literal high ground. There was recognition that if missiles were going to be flying between North America and the Soviet Union, most of them would be going that way.”

In the 1970s, as the Coast Guard decommissioned the Wind Class cutters after decades in service, the service brought two new heavy icebreakers online: the Polar Sea and the Polar Star.

The Sea and the Star were joined by the Healy, a medium-class icebreaker, in 1999. (Full disclosure: I served on the Healy as a Coast Guard officer from 2009 to 2011.) Today, only the Polar Star—more than 45 years old—and the Healy are operational. The Polar Sea has been out of service since 2010, slowly cannibalized for parts.

USCGC Healy, the U.S. Coast Guard’s newest polar icebreaker, is launched Nov. 15, 1997. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard.

Compare that with Russia’s icebreaker fleet: More than 45 military ships and counting—three additional ships are under construction, and Vladimir Putin has said the country plans to have 13 new icebreakers online by 2035. Even China, a thousand miles from the Arctic Circle, just laid the hull for its third icebreaker.

For years, the Coast Guard and Navy have been jointly developing a new class of icebreakers: polar security cutters, heavy icebreakers, the largest the United States has ever commissioned. The plan is for just three new ships—to be followed, at some undefined point in the future, by three additional medium icebreakers—but the program has been repeatedly delayed and plagued by design issues. A GAO report last summer found the Polar Security Cutter program was still at risk of a “costly rework and further delays.”

And while comparisons of the United States’ paltry icebreaker fleet to Russia’s and China’s are useful shorthand for the state of the country’s Arctic investment, the reality of the U.S. security landscape in the Arctic is far more complex.

“Polar icebreakers are necessary, but not sufficient,” Savitz says. “You need lots of other things.”

Chief among them are building up the capacity for domain awareness and operational readiness: the costly infrastructure—things like communications systems, equipment, and assets, along with the ability to maintain them—that helps the military understand what is happening in the environment, and the sustained presence of people who can monitor that information and respond if necessary. For the most part, the United States has neither.

The most recent Pentagon Arctic strategy was released in 2019. It emphasizes that Arctic security is U.S. security, and it focuses on three lines of efforts in the region: improving domain awareness, increasing operations, and bolstering rules-based order. But while it nods to things like cold weather training and joint exercises, it does little to pinpoint specific or significant fiscal or resource commitments.

U.S. Army paratroopers with the 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 11th Airborne Division, “Arctic Angels,” proceed to a staging area after completing airborne training at Malemute Drop Zone, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, Dec. 8, 2023. Photo by Airman Raina Dale, courtesy of the U.S. Army.

“I think a lot of people have done a good job laying out what needs to happen to improve U.S. access and presence in the Arctic,” says Abbie Tingstad, a research professor at the Center for Arctic Study and Policy at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, as well as the lead author on the recent RAND study, conducted while she was with RAND. “Now it just costs money and time and getting organized.”

In 2022, the department stood up an Arctic Strategy and Global Resilience Office to guide U.S. security strategy in the region and help coordinate the three combatant commands that have responsibility over the region: U.S. Northern Command, U.S. European Command, and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

A national strategy for the Arctic, released by the White House in 2022, highlights security as its first strategic pillar for the region, pointing specifically to the need to “develop capabilities for expanded Arctic activity.”

Defense Department officials say an updated version of its Arctic strategy will be released early this year.

“This was one of those areas where we could have gotten out in front of it,” says Cameron Carlson, the assistant director of the Center for Arctic Security and Resilience and dean of the College of Business and Security Management at University of Alaska Fairbanks. “And I think every year that slips, we—especially on the DOD side—we end up taking a step farther and farther back from it because we really haven’t defined what our true Arctic interests are, what our stake will be here for the long term.”

‘Everything Breaks in the Arctic’

There are many reasons for the gulf that exists between platitudes in policy and priorities in practice, but a primary one is just the sheer complexity of operating in the Arctic. Maintaining equipment and conducting operations in such an extremely cold environment require unique standards and approaches.

“Everything breaks in the Arctic,” Savitz says. “Fuels gel, lubricants don’t. The batteries fail, the materials shatter and snap, everything is iced over. And it’s extremely hard on humans.”

For instance, in the Pentagon’s announcement of its Arctic strategy office, Iris Ferguson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Arctic and global resilience, pointed out that much of the military’s infrastructure in the far north is built on permafrost, which is melting as the planet warms.

“We’re working to mitigate that,” Ferguson said at the time.

The harsh environment makes continued maintenance paramount—a challenge in budget cycles that tend to favor shiny new toys. And the region’s exceptional parameters mean equipment designed for the Arctic might not be particularly useful elsewhere—another tough fiscal sell.

U.S. Marine Corps Cpl. Audra St Hilaire conducts an ice breaker drill as part of Marine Rotational Forces Europe 23.1 in Setermoen, Norway, Feb. 9, 2023. Photo by Sgt. Christian Garcia, courtesy of the U.S. Marine Corps.

Take the Navy’s surface fleet, for example. U.S. naval submarines have, for decades, operated in the Arctic—but primarily out of sight, intentionally. The Navy’s Arctic strategy promises an “enhanced presence” in the Arctic, pledging to “provide our Sailors, Marines, and Civilians with the education, training, and equipment necessary to preserve peace and respond to crises in the region.”

That’s a complicated promise.

“If you create a surface fleet that is specific to that region … that will become a heavier ship,” Carlson says. “And heavier ships don’t move as fast. They’re not as agile. They’re not as fuel efficient.”

So instead, the Navy’s strategy points to partnerships with the Coast Guard, which has more institutional knowledge about Arctic operations as well as the military’s only icebreakers.

“The Coast Guard has been the most active of any of the services in trying to maintain Arctic capabilities and build capacity,” Savitz says.

In part, that’s because of the nature of Arctic security: It’s more about competition than it is about conflict. The Coast Guard is used to a mission set that focuses on enforcing laws and regulations, and responding when things go wrong.

For the other military branches, being told to wait around “in a place that is remote, and where it’s really hard to operate, and where you’re likely going to have various systems fail, when there’s intense attention on other parts of the world, or flare-ups, or crises” isn’t popular, Savitz says. “Part of the problem is that there is such a strong nondefense component of security up there.”

The northern lights appear above the CGC Stratton (WMSL 752) as it patrols near the Arctic Circle in 2022. Photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Elyse Coler, courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard.

But the Coast Guard, as the only military branch housed in the Department of Homeland Security, is always strapped for cash, and the need for U.S. presence and response in the Arctic is only growing, analysts argue. A shrinking ice cap and increasing ship traffic raise questions about regulating things like fisheries and access to other resources, or enforcing international standards. And then there’s the issue of what happens if things go wrong—like an environmental catastrophe or a search-and-rescue disaster.

“The intersection of climate change and, say, economic factors, or the intersection of changing demographics—all of those combinations also then create these situations where I think these black swan-type events may become a little bit more frequent,” Tingstad says. “The U.S. as a whole has such global priorities—something has to get racked and stacked, and that’s certainly understandable. But from an Arctic perspective, of course, the concern is that it’s low probability. It feels low probability until it actually happens.”

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Other Arctic nations, particularly Russia, which has a substantial military and economic presence in the region, may be better poised to respond—and its day-to-day operations there raise questions about whose values and interests are prioritized in the Arctic.

“Presence equals influence, and influence often translates to power,” Burke says. “The point being is that if we collectively want to be influential, and have any sort of power position in the Arctic whatsoever, we actually need to be there.”

Editor’s note: Following reader feedback, The War Horse updated this article to include additional context about recent pacts between the U.S. military and several Nordic countries regarding base access.

This War Horse investigation was reported by Sonner Kehrt, edited by Kelly Kennedy, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Abbie Bennett wrote the headlines.

thewarhorse.org · by Sonner Kehrt · January 18, 2024

26. Why an Army Special Forces vet remains in custody on Jan. 6 charges

Why an Army Special Forces vet remains in custody on Jan. 6 charges

militarytimes.com · by Rachael Riley, The Fayetteville Observer · January 18, 2024

Editor’s note: This story was first published in The Fayetteville Observer.

A Special Forces veteran accused of participating in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots remained in custody Wednesday, more than three years after the attacks.

Jeffrey McKellop, 58, is a decorated Army veteran who previously served with the 3rd Special Forces Group, according to court records. He was among 1,265 people charged in the assault on the U.S. Capitol that resulted in more than $2.88 million in costs and damages and disrupted the certification of Joe Biden as president.

McKellop retired from the Army on Aug. 12, 2010, at then-Fort Bragg after serving more than 20 years, including nine years with the Special Forces, his military records show.

According to the second superseding grand jury indictment, McKellop is charged with:

• 10 counts of assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers.
• Two counts of assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers using a deadly or dangerous weapon.
• One count of civil disorder.
• One count of entering and remaining on restricted grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon.
• One count of disorderly and disruptive conduct on restricted grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon.
• One count of engaging in physical violence on restricted grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon.
• One count of engaging in physical violence within the Capitol grounds.

He pleaded not guilty to all counts. McKellop’s Dec. 11 trial date was rescheduled for May after he requested new legal representation.

Changes in attorneys

Federal prosecutors filed a Dec. 12 motion requesting a status conference on the case following a Nov. 22 court approval of McKellop’s request to terminate Phillip Linder and James Bright as his attorneys.

“They will be the seventh and eighth lawyers the defendant has rejected,” a Nov. 13 prosecution motion states.

Court record shows that McKellop is now represented by attorneys Michael Lawlor and Adam Demetrious.

Psychiatric evaluation

An April 3 court order required a psychological evaluation of McKellop after finding “that the defendant Jeffrey McKellop is mentally incompetent” following a hearing and a “preponderance of evidence.”

In March, the judge denied McKellop’s request to waive a jury trial pending the outcome of his competency evaluation.

Court records show that McKellop was transferred to Federal Medical Center, Fort Worth on April 28 to undergo a competency evaluation with the exam findings due by June 27. The results of that evaluation were not available, and an Aug. 21 order laid out a schedule for trial preparations.

Defense

McKellop has previously filed a series of motions seeking to have the case dismissed.

In a September 2022 motion, he argued that President Joe Biden “has intentionally and irreparably poisoned the entire nation as a jury pool,” citing comments Biden made about the riots during a Sept. 1, 2022, address.

During his remarks, the president said Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again supporters view the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 “not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger to the throat of our democracy, but they look at them as patriots.”

McKellop also sought to move his trial out of Washington D.C. claiming in a March 2022 motion that he would not receive a fair trial and impartial jury there because about “93% of voters in Washington voted against Donald Trump” and that media coverage was unfair toward the Jan. 6 events and related arrests.

In reply to the government’s opposition to the dismissal, McKellop further referenced Biden’s Jan. 1, 2022, speech, arguing that “the president’s poisoning of the jury pool has obstructed the conduct of an impartial trial.

McKellop has also argued for pretrial release, claiming that in the summer of 2021, his cell was searched and that federal agents took 70 documents of McKellop’s notes about his case.

“The repeated measures by which the jail staff has prevented Defendant’s access to his own discovery have precluded his replicating the seized notes,” a December 2022 motion stated. “These measures have not only rendered impossible any reasonable semblance of assisting in the preparation of his trial defense ...”

In a Dec. 8, 2022 motion, federal prosecutors said that jail staff confiscated McKellop’s hard drive and returned it to him and that documents were seized in 2022 tied to a computer fraud investigation and would be returned.

Accusations

McKellop is accused of entering the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021, with flagpoles, a helmet, tactical vest, protective eyewear and gas mask and remaining in the area 90 minutes after police told the crowd to leave.

The government alleges that McKellop threw objects at officers three times before pressing toward the police line and scaffolding near the southwest area of the Capitol. There, he is accused of trying to grab a can of riot-control spray from a lieutenant’s hand, throwing a bottle at a line of officers, grabbing another officer, striking a sergeant and assaulting another officer by shoving her to the side.

At one point, McKellop reportedly appeared to assist an officer who fell to the ground, then allegedly struck a captain in the face, causing lacerations and scarring, and allegedly threw a flagpole “as though it were a spear” at the captain.

McKellop also allegedly attacked from behind another officer attempting to contain rioters and threw another object at officers, the government said.

McKellop said he was unarmed and did not intend on rioting when he and a friend traveled to Washington, D.C., to the Jan. 6 rally with held by then-President Donald Trump.

In a letter included in the record, the friend who accompanied McKellop, Scott Steiert, said McKellop was concerned that “anti-Trumpers” would attack him for his political views.

Steiert said McKellop brought his body armor with him as a defense against “any attack possibly from anti-Trumpers.”

In a Feb. 27, 2023, motion, U.S. attorneys sought to prohibit McKellop from being able to knowledge of Capital surveillance camera locations, information provided to his attorneys for trail preparation, because it would compromise security concerns.

Prosecutors said the bulk of video evidence comes from body cameras worn by police or videos taken by members of the crowd.

U.S. attorneys also sought to prohibit McKellop from being able to argue that law enforcement permitted defendants to enter the Capitol.

Citing a prior case that argued former President Trump gave defendants permission to enter the Capitol, prosecutors said that no president or members of law enforcement can use their authority to “allow individuals to enter the Capitol building during a violent riot,” especially when there were “obvious police barricades, police lines, and police orders restricting entry at the Capitol.”

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com